


Just a Dream

by applejoy



Series: A long time ago... [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, I Don't Even Know, Original Character(s), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, just let me live, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applejoy/pseuds/applejoy
Summary: The girl, Representative Thalassa, bowed to the Jedi. Fives was transfixed on the swinging of her long black braid as she joined Senator Amidala and the generals. He didn’t hear a word that was spoken again until Echo nudged him harder than he needed to.“Stop sleeping! Captain’s just given orders, to your station!” Fives half-heartedly shoved his vod back but made for his assigned post.This mission had officially gone from boring to boring with a view.********************Alternatively:Fives falls ass over teakettle for a girl he just met.
Relationships: CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555/Original Character(s)
Series: A long time ago... [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1736182
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	1. Strategy

Part One: The Battle for Atolli Prime

_INCOMING TRANMISSION ~ MILITARY ENCRYPTION CODE 05251977_

THIS IS CAPTAIN HAMA OF THE ATOLLIAN PLANETARY GUARD

ATOLLI PRIME UNDER ATTACK

REPEAT – ATOLLI PRIME IS UNDER ATTACK

SEPARTISTS DROIDS HOLDING MINING GUILD DELEGATION HOSTAGE

CRUISERS BLOCKADING PLANET, DEDLANITE MINE IN DANGER OF FALLING

PLANETARY GUARD CALLING FOR REPUBLIC REINFORCEMENTS

PLEASE RESPOND ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The klaxons ringing through the base pulled Fives out of his bunk and into a half-blind race to piece his kit together. He ran through each piece in his mind, snapping them into place with a practiced hand: left greave and right, shoulder pads, gauntlets, and bucket. They were pulled out of their neat pile at the edge of his bunk. He could put it all on in under a minute, under pressure or in total darkness and had done so many times in the middle of the night during training drills on Kamino.

“What do you’ll think it’ll be this time?”

Echo’s voice was far too excited for how early it was. He was already awake and alert, piecing his own kit together on just a few hours of rest. He had jumped down from the top bunk lithe as a lothcat as if he had been awake waiting for the sirens to bring them to their next battle.

“Whatever it is, it can’t be good if they’re shipping us out in the middle of the night.”

Fives adjusted the fit of his shoulder pads; the magnet on his right had taken some damage and would need to be replaced soon but it would hold for now.

“But it’ll just be another fight for us, _vod.”_

Before donning their helmets, the two checked each other’s kit over to ensure nothing was misplaced or misaligned. Echo straightened out his shoulder pad but said nothing. After so much time, Fives knew the correction had an underlying message to take better care of his _karking_ kit before it got him killed.

But Echo knew as well as he did that time was not on their side. They donned their buckets and hurried after their brothers to the muster point for General Skywalker to tell them where they’d be fighting their next round of Separatists.

**********************************************************

“Gentlemen,” the General greeted his troops with all of the excitement of a shiny who had been handed a bucket and a toothbrush to scrub the barracks’ floor. Even Jedi took issue with being pulled from their beds in the middle of the night.

“Our mission is simple; we are escorting members of the senate to Atolli Prime to negotiate the immediate release of several hostages. Should these negotiations fail, we are to liberate the hostages and secure the planet.”

Fives caught himself before he laughed. There had yet to be any negotiation with the Seppies that hadn’t ended in the blasterfire. The assembled forces of the 501st and the 212th in the Resolute’s hangar told him that the GAR wasn’t expecting a peaceful resolution either.

The little commander, Tano, continued the briefing where the General left off.

“Attoli Prime’s current weather will make landing difficult. It’s the middle of their hurricane season and a Separatist blockade of the planet means air support will be minimal.”

She continued on describing the planet conditions and how they would launch their attack with the locals’ help, but Fives allowed his mind to wander. They had all trained on the most miserable, water-drenched planet in the galaxy, hadn’t they? One storm was far from the worst conditions he’d been in.

Beyond that, he had learned that the plans in these briefings were rarely what the General followed through with and Echo paid enough attention for the two of them, anyways.

Just as Commander Tano was about to dismiss them to their posts, sending the battalions into a mad dash of loading equipment and preparing fighters, a senate transport entered the hangar.

“Just what we need,” Fives dared to whisper to Echo. “More civvies to get in the way.”

Echo made no acknowledgement of what he said but responded without even the slightest move of his helmet. “If you had been listening, you’d know the civvies on planet already evacuated out when the hurricane started. These are the senators coming to negotiate.”

Fives rolled his eyes inside his bucket.

“Like they’ll be any use-”

“Attention!” Captain Rex’s command snapped the sleep-addled troopers back into a more substantial formation. Standing on ceremony was not the strength of either battalion at any hour of the day, but Fives realised why as the transport doors opened to reveal the Chancellor himself.

He was accompanied by General Kenobi and a retinue made up of a few members of the senate, one of which Fives recognised as Senator Amidala.

“Do you think he’s coming with us?” Fives hissed at Echo, but his brother shushed him in response.

The Chancellor greeted General Skywalker and Fives strained to hear their conversation.

“General Skywalker,” The old man spoke in the soft, delicate tones of a seasoned politician. “I trust you understand the importance and the delicacy of this situation. The dedlanite mines must not fall into Separatist hands. I am entrusting you and Senator Amidala with this most important task.”

The senator standing to the left of the Chancellor made a noise of indignation.

She was an older, stately woman swathed in an array of deep red fabric and her white hair was pulled into a severe bun at the base of her neck. Despite the dim lighting of the hangar, he could see the array of tattoos that decorated her face and he was sure it meant she was some kind of important person to her people. Her pale eyes were narrowed at the Chancellor, as if his very presence were an inconvenience to her.

Fives recognised her look as a politician who knew her importance and made sure everyone else did too. To him, it was the worst kind of civvie to deal with.

The Chancellor acknowledged her interruption with all the grace of his station. “Of course,” he inclined his head to the woman. “The honourable Senator Revma of Atolli Prime has thankfully taken my advice to not endanger herself by joining you on this mission.”

The woman, Senator Revma, seemed almost placated by his obeisance to her station. She bowed to the Chancellor and to the Jedi before her.

“I live only to serve the Republic, but it appears that some sacrifices must be made to old age.”

She drawled out her response as she made a motion at one of the people in her retinue, dressed in the same style of swathed robes as her. A woman Fives had only glanced over, stepped forward, bowing low to the assembled group of senators and Jedi.

He regretted ever having skipped over her; where her senator was severe, she was gorgeous.

She was not the kind of pretty of the contraband holos his brothers swapped around, but something else entirely. Her dark green robe was conservative where Senator Revma’s demanded attention and even the tattoos on her face seemed somehow more a natural feature than a declaration of importance. The way she held her head low and folded her hands gave off an air of uncertainty and it made him sure this was her first time leaving the senator’s watchful gaze.

“This is Representative Nura Thalassa. Consider her my voice in all things.”

The girl, Representative Thalassa, bowed again to the Jedi and told them in a small voice that “I seek only to serve.”

Fives was transfixed on the swinging of her long black braid as she joined Senator Amidala and the generals. He didn’t hear a word that was spoken again until Echo nudged him harder than he needed to.

“Stop sleeping! Captain’s just given orders, to your station!”

Fives half-heartedly shoved his vod back but made for his assigned post.

This mission had officially gone from boring to boring with a view.

**********************************************************

The Resolute had only just departed Coruscant and Fives was already itching for the next battle. Hyperspace travel was an unwanted lull in action, a pause in chances to prove himself to the captain and his comrades that he belonged in the ranks of Anakin Skywalker’s legion. This anxiety was only made worse by the reminder that this current mission wasn’t even meant to be a battle.

But then maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, after all, he decided. Maybe he would be assigned to the squad protecting the negotiation team and then at least he’d have something nice to look at for once. Or, he thought again, maybe it would be a chance for him to climb the ranks.

Undeterred by the official task of a peaceful resolution given to them by the Senate, Fives let his mind wander about what he was sure would be another battle. One more lap around the upper levels of the deck would take him to the end of his watch shift, where he would meet up with Echo in the mess and maybe grab a ration bar before sleeping the rest of the journey to Atolli Prime.

The early departure was starting to wear down on him as he supressed a yawn in his helmet. It was only made worse by his current assignment – upper deck patrols. This particular solo guard shift was a torture foisted only upon the newest of troopers to the 501st and meant circling the almost-always empty passenger quarters of the _Resolute._

Eager to please, he had accepted the assignment without protest – but now he was wondering what he could do to be promoted to something even a bit more palatable. Even Echo had been moved from guarding the cargo hold when the newest batch of shinies had come in.

Reminded of the brother he was currently ignoring, Fives changed the frequency in his HUD back to talk with Echo.

Technically speaking, this was against regs and Echo had shut down the idea when they’d heard other brothers misusing the comms on Rishi. Not more than a week into being with the 501st, though, had Captain Rex mentioned that some regs mattered more than others, and that no, the General does not care that three troopers on patrol were discussing the latest holoball game.

Fives tuned in at the wrong moment, it appeared, as a voice just like his own echoed back something he was reading.

“-ringed ocean islands, from which the planet gets its name, contain lagoons the Atollians use to hide their solar generators, landing platforms, and other technological equipment.” Fives groaned into the comms.

“Echo, just ‘cause we get extra things to read about the missions doesn’t mean we have to actually read them.”

As much as he loved his _vod,_ the only thing that could make solo guard duty worse was listening to the culture specs of a planet they’d spend less than a few days on. And if he really wanted to know something about the planet, he thought to himself, maybe he could ask the pretty senator about her homeworld.

“Fives, part of this mission is a hostage crisis. We should know something about what we’re going into!”

Fives rolled his eyes under his bucket and did his best to communicate the sentiment over the comms.

“Alright, Echo. I’m sure knowing planetary geography is going to make the generals hand-pick you to negotiate with the Separatists.”

Echo made an indignant noise in reply.

“Look,” Fives continued. “We’re on this mission so that when the negotiations fall apart, General Skywalker has back-up.”

Before Echo could reply, Fives switched his comm off again. He would hear enough from him when they met in the mess, and silence was a high-value commodity on cruisers.

Seven hundred more steps and he’d turn the corner, five hundred-odd after that he would meet the unlucky trooper who would replace him at the lift. If he measured his pace perfectly, he wouldn’t have to wait at the doors like some overly eager shiny.

The ship’s lighting shone brightly overhead, bouncing over the bare walls of the corridor. The lack of traffic meant the hallway was clear of the usual wear and its purpose as housing for high society meant it was finished to a higher degree than the rest of the ship. There were only two cabins on this level besides that, and the senators must not have been concerned with their accommodations as he had not seen either of them during his watch.

As he rounded the corner, he thought of the possibility of this assignment not turning into a firefight. Though the thought was a dark cloud in his plans, maybe this would really be the relief mission the briefing had promised.

Momentarily distracted by his dismay, Fives didn’t have time to react as a cabin door slid open and a person stepped out in front of him.

“Watch – hey!”

The person nearly toppled over him and he grabbed their arm to steady them both.

“Sorry, sorry!” The stranger, a human woman, sputtered as she righted herself. She clutched a datapad in one hand as she readjusted the green fabric that swathed her form. “I hadn’t realised troopers were allowed on this level.”

He stood there, speechless, at the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

“Trooper?” She asked again and he realised he still had a steadying arm on her. He dropped his hand as if the contact burned him.

Unsure of how to proceed, he stepped back from her. “We have a patrol on every level, sir-uh ma’am.” Cursing his own inability to speak, he resolved to never speak of this painful interaction to any of his _vod_ until his dying day.

Representative Thalassa, whose title seemed far grander than anything he could ever pretend to be, swiped a stray lock of black hair away from her face. She seemed younger than any of the generals and more timid than a cadet who’d just admitted to breaking his training blaster.

“Yes, yes of course you would be on patrol. My apologies, trooper. I’m just making my way to the command deck.” She gestured with her datapad to the lifts.

Fives motioned for her to continue on her way. “No apologies needed, Senator.”

Her tattooed face flushed red, “Oh no, no I’m not the senator! I am here in her place, but I still am only a representative.”

Fives tried his hardest to focus on her explanations, but the blue of her eyes, so pale they were almost white, had captured his attention.

Realising the silence left after her introduction, he cleared his throat. “Right, yes. Of course, that was in the mission briefing, now I remember.”

She didn’t seem to notice his own uncertainty or was too polite to let it show on her face. If any of his brothers could see him now, he’d never hear the end of it. Turned into a shiny meeting his first girl by one above average civvie!

“Right, I can escort you to the command deck, Representative.” It would push back the amount of time he had to eat and sleep, but he couldn’t help but be drawn in by her presence.

“Thank you, trooper, but I couldn’t possibly take you away from your duties.”

Fives looked over his shoulder at the empty hall behind them and turned back to the empty hall in front of them.

“There’s not really much to be guarding.”

She laughed, a sound that brought a small smile to her lips and made her pale eyes flash in the ship’s artificial light.

Straightening up, he motioned with his head for her to follow him. “Besides, I’m about to replaced on duty here. It’s quite the dangerous patrol to be on so they rotate us out fairly often.”

“I can only imagine.”

They started down the corridor toward the lift and he couldn’t help but observe how tightly she clutched her datapad or the way she kneaded the edge of her shawl in her other hand. As they reached the lift to wait for his replacement, his curiosity got the better of him.

“I don’t suppose you’re here as a military advisor, Representative Thalassa?”

She craned her neck to look at the visor of his helmet, almost as if she was trying to meet his eyes through the dark plastoid.

“Are you mocking me, trooper?”

A smarter man might think twice about goading a senator’s aide, but Fives had never been one for high intelligence.

“I would never dare make fun of a member of the Senate. They’ve court-martialled better men than me for less.”

His insolence earned him another light laugh and an indignant smile.

“I’ll have you know, trooper, that I trained in the Atollian army before being swept into politics.” She gestured to her shawl, as if it was the chain that tied her to senate. “But I am here in a strictly advisory role on planetary geography.”

Before she could continue, the lift door slid open. His replacement, a shiny whose armour was still pristinely white, nodded at him.

“Fives.”

He nodded in return. “All quiet on this level, just taking the representative to the command deck. The patrol is yours.”

The shiny stepped away, beginning his own agonising tour of the level.

“After you, representative.” She nodded to him in thanks and entered the lift.

“What is ‘fives’?” She asked as she pressed the level and he took his place beside her.

“Fives?” He repeated.

“Yes, the other trooper. He said it you.”

Weighing his options, he decided he didn’t have enough time to get any real teasing in.

“Well, it’s me. My name that is.” He replied as the lift door slid open, revealing the expanse of the _Resolute’s_ command deck. What he would give to be up this high with the Generals.

“What’s yours?”

He asked it automatically, only after realising how rude he must have come across.

She stepped out of the lift and gave him a small wave in parting. Before the door slid close, he heard her reply.

“Nura. My name is Nura.”

**********************************************************

“Representative Thalassa, thank you for joining us.”

From any other person in the galaxy, the greeting would have been a slight – a dig at her obvious tardiness as she joined the assembled council. But from the famed negotiator, Jedi General Kenobi, it seemed only an acknowledgment of her presence before the conversation continued.

Senator Amidala gave her a reassuring smile as she joined the holotable. Nura felt uneasy in the presence of the army’s foremost generals. Her anxiety was only increased at the sight of Atolli Prime, her homeworld, projected for inspection and planning of their attack. Various points on the map highlighted strategic landing points and military outposts, though the place that caught her eyes was the northern continent where Confederacy ships loomed.

“The dedlanite mine has a heavy droid presence. Reports from the leader of the Atollian forces tell us that the Mining Guild delegation is being held hostage by Separatist droid battalions in a compound a kilometre northeast of the mine itself.” Kenobi marked out the location. “Our initial scout reports confirm droid presence and an oncoming hurricane.

“Senator Amidala and Representative Thalassa will land with a small squad on the airbase to negotiate the hostages’ release. In the meanwhile, the 501st and 212th will land just west of the base to provide support should negotiations sour.”

The Jedi was overly confident in his plans. Captain Hama’s reports to the Republic had left much out, Nura knew and she bristled at the dissection of her people’s struggle into military objectives. More than that, her planet’s own penchant for secrecy meant she knew this plan would fall apart before they landed.

Before she could say so, Senator Amidala interjected on her behalf.

“Senator Revma sent Representative Thalassa as a geographic advisor, not as a negotiator. It appears the Attolians have kept certain information about their planet secret.”

Nura nodded to her in thanks.

“If I may,” she held up her datapad. “These charts will illuminate certain aspects of Atolli Prime that will complicate your plan. Captain Hama is an excellent military leader, but our customs dictate that our planet’s true defensive strategies are revealed on a need-to-know basis.”

She handed the datapad to an astromech who replaced the current projection with her own.

“The dedlanite mines sit on the western tip of the northern continent, but they are bordered to the east and the south by a chain of active volcanoes that would prevent any troops landing.” She highlighted the range on the map and zoomed in on the mine itself. “The mine itself is bordered by the ocean to the west. Any attack on the mine would have to come from above or below.”

“Air support would be difficult given the current separatist blockade of the planet,” Admiral Yularen observed. “We also have yet to take into account the scout reports of a hurricane that will coincide with our attack.”

“Should negotiations fail, Admiral, there is a military base on Acheron, here.” She manipulated the map, bringing their view to one of the bigger ringed islands in the western ocean. “The lagoon at the centre hides the landing platforms. My people will have disengaged the site, sinking the platforms under three meters of water and leaving them virtually undetectable to the Separatists.”

“Landing craft will be useless,” Admiral Yularen considered the new information as he pulled up the weather reports the scouts had sent. “Our troop ships will not be able to hover over the island either. We need to reengage those platforms for this attack to work.”

General Skywalker made a sound of dissent. He pointed to the ocean separating the landing platforms from the mine.

“These platforms still don’t solve our biggest issue; how can we lead an attack on the mine from this island? There are ten kilometers of ocean that would separate us from the mine.”

Nura drew the edge of her himation tighter around her body and steeled her reserve in the face of the Jedi.

“The Chancellor has assured me that the information I am about to tell you will not be revealed to anyone outside of this operation.” She adjusted the holotable, bringing up the schematics of the military base at Acheron.

“Off-worlders are not privy to this as a rule, but our islands are connected by a network of tunnels below the seafloor. Acheron has a direct line into the base of the mine that no droid could ever hope to find.”

“Then we’ll use this tunnel to bring our forces into the mine and clear out the droids from the bottom up.” General Skywalker concluded.

“That might create more problems, master. If we send the droids up, won’t they just head back to their ships?” The togruta padawan had a sharp mind, Nura was sure, though she was unused to a youngling being permitted to speak in a group of elders without permission.

“The only way to leave the mine is through the landing platform located at the airbase just outside the compound where the hostages are being held.”

Nura maneuvered the map to the area.

“The mine is deep enough that any small landing craft would be pulled in by the downward draft. All air traffic leaves and enters through this central location. Fortunately for us, our planetary guard has fallen back to the base and it is currently held by what remains of our forces.”

“The Separatists have trapped themselves on the planet, then.” The padawan observed. “What if your people lose control of the platform?”

Nura shifted uneasily at the question. “They have been given their final orders, Padawan Tano.”

“Final orders?” General Kenobi looked far too knowing and far too dismayed for Nura’s liking.

“ _Sto thánato, exypiretó_.” She tried to channel Senator Revma, though she felt small and useless in comparison to the great lady. “In death, serve. If their commanders feel all hope is lost, they will destroy the airbase before it falls into enemy hands.”

“I take that to mean they would not evacuate themselves beforehand?”

Before Nura could offer a response, she was cut off by Senator Amidala.

“I would like to remind everyone present,” she turned toward the Jedi in what Nura thought was veiled disdain. “That this is a diplomatic mission first. We must ensure the release of the hostages and attempt to end this incident without conflict.”

Nura looked at the miniature of her planet. Her heart broke for what the next days would bring to her home.

“I do not mean to contradict you, Senator Amidala, but Senator Revma has heard on good authority that the Separatists are using the negotiations to stall for time so they can get more dedlanite out of the mines. If we mean to defend my planet, we must launch an offensive.”

“I agree that this is all too convenient for the Separatists,” General Kenobi looked apologetically to the Senator.

“But we must put our faith in diplomacy first. I will join the negotiations while General Skywalker leads the 501st into the mine. Commander Cody will remain on ship with the 212th to provide outside support to the Atollian forces on the airbase. Admiral Yularen will move the fleet into position to interfere with the blockade and provide air support should the need arise.

“If the Atollians can hold the airbase until reinforcements arrive,” Kenobi continued. “We can avoid any major losses if the negotiations fail.”

Satisfied with their strategy, the group finalised their plan of attack into battalions and landing craft and air support.

Nura’s heart raced in her chest. She was certain the Jedi saw her homeworld in terms of numbers, but she couldn’t help but think of the islands of her childhood and the white sands of her home.

Just as General Skywalker and his padawan made to brief their men, Nura realised she had not been clear of her own role in this endeavour.

“I just need one more moment of your time, generals,” she anxiously picked at the ends of her shawl before looking across the holotable to the waiting men. “Senator Revma has made it clear that I am to accompany the first wave of ground forces to the planet.”


	2. An Expected Betrayal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note on timeline - this section is meant to take place in between "Rookies" and "Downfall of a Droid."

**CHAPTER TWO – AN EXPECTED BETRAYAL**

Fives settled into his bunk and closed his eyes.

He pushed down thoughts of his day that sent his heart racing, the way Nura’s braid had swung behind her, and the _di’kut_ he had made of himself while talking to her. All of this he ignored as he sunk into the thin cushioning, his back already sore from the metal underneath. Soldiers of the Republic had no need for comfortable beds, after all. The need for such things had been trained out of them in their youth, though Fives still would have appreciated an extra half-inch of padding in his mattress.

Nevertheless, he was finally asleep when the klaxons sounded for the second time that day.

The wailing alarm sent his brothers scrambling for their kit and their stations once again as they prepared for their next hellhole as General Skywalker briefed them over the comms.

“Check the seals of your suits, men.” Captain Rex was doing the rounds as Torrent Company kitted up, clicking armour plates into place. “We’ll be arriving during a storm.”

The warning was taken to heart by the battalions who once spent the worst days of their youth training outside on Kamino. Fives made sure that the seals on his blacks were watertight and reminded himself again in his mind to see the quartermaster for kit repair on their next rotation home.

Standing inside the LAAT/I, elbow to elbow with his brothers, Fives steeled his nerves. They would be landing in a hurricane, in the middle of the ocean with Force knows how many battle droids waiting for them on the other side.

The weather was the farthest thing from his mind, however, when a now-familiar face climbed into the transport to stand with General Skywalker and Commander Tano.

The Jedi were meant to be above emotion, he recalled, but any shiny who survived training under a rotating door of bounty hunters could spot indignant annoyance a mile off.

The General apparently wasn’t happy with whatever the Representative was telling him, though Fives couldn’t hear over the excited chatter of his brothers and the _hum_ of the transport as the pilots primed the engines.

Nura, for her part, looked as nervous yet put-together as she had when her senator sent her off. The draping of her green robe looked out of place on the troop transport, a spot of calm in a sea of excited men.

He watched and waited for her to leave, to go join Senator Amidala and General Kenobi, but she didn’t. As the transport lurched and then lifted into the air, Fives realised why the General had been so upset.

The Senate expected them to take a civilian into battle

*

Fives braced himself against the wind gusts that rocked the transport. The wind brought a wave of rain into the LAAT/I, sending water rushing over his bucket and making the metal floor slick. The grip of his boot soles and his bracing arm were the only things that kept him form tumbling into the churning black water below them. His stomach flipped in response and he felt Echo nudge his side.

“You gonna survive, _vod_?”

At that moment he was sure the answer was no, but he nodded anyways.

“We haven’t flown in a storm like this since training on Kamino!” The pilot relayed over the comms, half-shouting to be heard over the rushing wind and crashing waves. “General, we can see the island, but the pad is flooded! We can’t land!”

Another gust rocked the transport, bringing a spray of seawater through the open bay doors as they circled the island. Fives kept his grip on the rack above him, thankful for the watertight seals in his suit.

“Can we land on the beach?” General Skywalker was drenched in seawater and his padawan was no better. Their position by the doors left them to face the worst of what the weather had to offer.

“No, we’re too heavy! We’d be bogged down in the sand.” The pilot turned the ship against another gust of wind, sending men clattering into one another.

As if to answer the thoughts he had sent into the universe, the sudden movement sent Nura crashing into him.

“Easy, little lady.” She couldn’t have possibly heard him over the roaring of the wind or the pounding of the rain. With one arm bracing them, Fives set her back on her feet.

Nura pushed away from his side.

“I told you, the landing platforms would have been disengaged when the island was evacuated. It’s why Senator Revma sent me with you!”

She pointed out of the transport door to the island, nearly indistinguishable from the sea in the rain. The only thing Fives could see were spots of what could only be sand under the black churning waters.

Unfazed by her earlier stumble and the rain that drenched her clothing, Nura’s eyes flashed in the dark and she faced the General.

“Tell the pilot to move us to the edge of the atoll, where the water gets deep and drop us as close to the surface as possible.”

He watched the exchange in confusion with the rest of the clones.

“You can’t seriously be considering continuing this plan,” General Skywalker moved as if to block the transport door. “The storm is too heavy, you’ll drown!”

But Nura unwrapped her shawl in one swift movement and handed it off to the Jedi, revealing her black tunic and tights. “I’ve swam in this sea since I was child, Master Jedi. I’ve long since passed the ability to drown.”

The sky outside the transport door was nearly black with rain. The pilot did as she instructed and brought them down to sea level.

Fives felt his stomach drop as he realised her plan.

“On my mark, Master Jedi! Have the pilot take you back to the landing pad!”

“Your mark?”

Instead of responding to his question, Nura launched herself out of the transport.

Fe couldn’t see or hear her hit the water for the wind and pouring rain. In the dark of the transport, the general looked more annoyed than concerned they had let a member of the Senate drown herself.

“Take us back to the landing pad!”

Fives looked out the transport door helplessly, the black water churning meters under them. Could any humanoid survive that? The answer was apparently not important to General Skywalker, who was looking to the indistinguishable horizon.

The minutes it took to bring them back to the island felt like a lifetime.

“There!” Commander Tano pointed a red arm to rising lights in the water. “The landing pad is moving to the surface!”

Where there had been nothing but water, Fives watched as a metal island rose in the darkness. He braced himself as the transport cut through the pouring rain towards the light of the platform and landed.

Men swarmed out of the transports and Fives followed his squad out into the elements.

“It’s just like home!” Echo yelled in an effort to be heard over the rain and crashes of seawater onto the platform. But just as he said the words, the rain and the water stopped as a domed shield formed over head, turning the sky a light blue and cutting the noise around them.

“I don’t think we have anything like this back home,” Fives replied in awe as the entire platform began moving downward back into the lagoon. Water crashed silently over the shield, burying them under the sea.

The General was unfazed by the sudden drop.

“Representative Thalassa,” he called out as he looked over the edge of the platform. There was break in the platform there, where Fives saw the last rungs of a ladder. “You could have at least given us a warning.” He extended his arm and Fives saw a hand grasp the General’s, then a familiar form scrambling up the ladder from somewhere under the platform.

“I apologise for the dramatics, Master Jedi.” Nura rose, drenched from her swim. “But I did mean it when I said my presence here was indispensable.”

Commander Tano passed her the robe she discarded and Nura deftly wrapped the fabric around her. To Fives, she looked far more graceful than anyone who had swam through a hurricane had any right to be.

“Now, onto the mine.”

*

In their briefing, General Skywalker had described the underwater paths from the landing platforms to the mine as ‘reinforced natural tunnels.’ What Fives immediately realised was how much room for interpretation that left.

The tunnels were made of the planet’s coral and were narrow, lined with the same shields as the landing platform. He could barely stand shoulder to shoulder with Echo and they jostled against one another in the dim light thrown from the shields.

General Skywalker’s lightsabre lit their path from the front.

“The entrance to the mines is just through this alcove,” he heard Nura say to the General. “I must check the communications terminal and warn the surviving forces of our plan.”

“You do that, I’ll check in with the negotiators.”

Captain Rex signalled a halt to the men. From his position near the front, Fives watched as Nura flipped switches on the odd-looking terminal.

“This is Representative Thalassa calling on any survivors, do you hear me?”

Static answered her; she toggled a few more switched and tried again. “ _Sympolemistés_ , are there any survivors? Please respond!”

Silence.

Then, a voice crackled in response. “Thalassa this is Captain Hama-” the sound of an explosion in the distance cut off part of his response. “-holding the airbase! Repeat, we are holding the airbase!”

“Reinforcements incoming!” Nura shouted into the terminal. “Repeat, hold position. Republic reinforcements incoming!”

Captain Hama didn’t respond.

“They must have knocked out the comms,” Commander Tano offered. Nura slumped her shoulders, defeated at the thought of her people dying. Fives knew the feeling.

The General returned from his own check-in. “Master Kenobi fears the negotiations are a stall for time by the Separatists, just like your senator warned.”

“My people will hold the airbase until the last man.”

The General nodded in response. “Then we’ll make our way into the mine.”

*

Just as Nura led the Jedi and his forces into position in the mine, the signal came from Kenobi to begin their offensive. Nura was far from surprised of the negotiations’ failure.

The clones made quick work of the opposing forces, though there were few true battle droids. It seemed as if the Separatists had been more concerned with filling the pit with mining droids to strip dedlanite from the planet’s rock.

Nura herself had taken up the weapon of a fallen Atollian guard to help clear a path through the mine. The shock-spear was a familiar weight in her hands, balanced and easy to handle even after spending a year on Coruscant.

From what she could overhear from the Jedi’s comm, the battle planetside was going a similar way. The droids were overwhelmed by the combined force of the clones and the torrential rain.

It had been, decisively, far too easy.

She said as much to General Skywalker, but he had waved off her concern in the same easy manner he cut down droids. There was nothing sinister in this outcome but the poor planning of the Separatist leadership. The feeling stayed with her nonetheless, as the battalion cleared out the mine and the Jedi brought them to the airbase.

The Republic reinforcements had cleared out the siege droids and she saw her own people helping to clear away the battle’s wreckage. In the air above them, a few lone fighters dispensed with the last of the separatist ships.

She inspected the integrity of the landing platform, the remaining towers, and found nothing to confirm the unease building in her mind.

“Pardon me, Representative.” Two clones approached her, helmets in hand. “But we – well Echo, found something we thought was bit concerning.”

She recognised the decorated armour of the one who spoke as Fives, the trooper she had bumped into earlier. The one beside him, she decided, must be Echo.

The two looked nervously at her. “Continue,” she instructed.

“Well, it’s the entire base,” the trooper named Echo started. “While clearing some debris we found a chain of explosives. The whole place is rigged to blow!”

That was not a surprise to Nura and it only confirmed to her how far her people would go for their sake of their planet.

Sensing he was losing her interest, the trooper continued. “The bombs are active, sir. I think they’re tied to a remote detonator.”

Another Republic ship landed behind the troopers, offloading more men and supplies. The storm had cleared during the final moments of the battle, leaving a darkened sky and a soaking platform. The amount of ships that had landed was much more than her planet, with its small population, truly needed. The supplies were most likely for the combined forces of the 501st and the 212th that were assembling their barracks inside the neighboring compound.

Nura realised the grave mistake she, Senator Revma, and the generals had made.

“With me, troopers. I’ll explain on the way.”

*

They donned their helmets and rushed after her, taking in her explanation of the Atollian’s last line of defense and the ease with which they recovered the mines. It was far too easy of a victory, she said quickly, and therefore was not the reason for the invasion.

Fives could see one of the Atollian officers across the landing pad. He was making the motions of thanks to Senator Amidala as she stepped onto a transport ship.

“Captain Hama!”

He turned at Nura’s voice. To Fives, he looked far too composed for someone who had lost most of his men only hours earlier. His black hair was slicked back from his forehead and his eyes held the same cruelty he had seen in the worst of their trainers on Kamino.

Captain Hama returned Nura’s greeting with a small bow which she returned as they approached the transport. 

“Will you be joining us, Representative Thalassa?”

“Not yet Captain Hama,” she made a sweeping gesture to the scene behind her. “My sincerest apologies, as well, for not seeking you out sooner. There appears to be some issues with the shield generator. If you are unable to stay planet-side, captain, it would be most helpful if I could borrow your command key.”

Fives’ attention was piqued at that and he looked to Echo to confirm his thinking.

This captain, who survived when his men hadn’t, was holding a detonator to a network of bombs under their feet. The generals, he knew, were directing the flow of incoming supplies on the other side of the base and would never reach them in time to help. A plan began to form in his mind.

Hama touched his vambrace in feigned uncertainty, “I understand the need for a key, Representative, but you forget yourself. Only a military commander is permitted this level of clearance. I would hate for you to _misuse_ it.”

Fives tightened his grip on his blaster, and he knew Echo did the same beside him.

Senator Amidala, as if called to action by the rising tension between the two Atollians, stepped out of the transport.

“Captain Hama, is there any issue here? Perhaps you can hand over the key to me and we’ll sort this out when the Prime Minister returns.”

Uncertainty flashed over the captain’s face for a moment before settling on indignation.

“Atolli Prime is not controlled by the Republic, senator. Representative Thalassa has merely forgotten where her place is here.” He composed himself, regaining the smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Now, why don’t we all sort this out on the transport?” 

That was all the confirmation Fives needed that this man was ready to blow them all away.

Reaching slowly to his wrist, he switched his comm frequency. “Echo you grab the captain; I’ll get the Representative.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

Fives readied himself as Nura tried again to talk Hama down. “Give me the key before you do something you’ll regret.”

“Something I’ll regret? I’ll show you something you’ll regret, Thalassa!”

Hama made as if to rip the vambrace off his arm, but instead reached for his holstered blaster. It was all the signal Fives and his _vod_ needed to act.

The captain may be a military leader on his planet, but he was no match for two brothers acting as one.

Fives pushed Nura to the ground, shielding her with his armoured body as Echo grabbed the captain. His focus was on securing the detonator, which left Hama free to get one shot off from his blaster. Fives grunted at the impact into his shoulder.

 _Stang_ , that had hurt. It felt the impact from his shoulder into his lungs. He rose slowly to his feet.

In the distance, he could hear troopers shouting as the Jedi ran towards the sound of blasterfire, sabres drawn.

Hama was shouting as Echo pinned him to the ground and he threw the vambrace to Senator Amidala.

“Are you alright, trooper?” Fives turned to Nura.

Her face was drawn over in concern. Was that because of him? He felt lightheaded and tried to focus on the silver-blue of her eyes.

“Fives?”

When had General Skywalker joined them? He wondered as the pain in his shoulder spread, then turned into numbness.

Falling to the ground, he couldn’t help but wonder at the blue of sky – finally clear after the storm. Then, everything went dark.


	3. Healing

**Chapter Three – Healing**

For the first time in perhaps his entire existence, Fives awoke to the sound of waves crashing onto a beach instead of klaxons.

“Where the _kriff_ –” he winced as discomfort radiated through his right side. He tried to sit up but was stopped by the seizing pain in his shoulder. The feeling made him gasp which introduced a new source of anguish to his body. He thought his shoulder was a bit sore but breathing felt like he had been shot through the lung.

Then he remembered that, as a matter of fact, he had been shot.

Carefully so as not to jostle his shoulder or strain his already aching vital organs, Fives took stock of the room around him. He was on some kind of pallet, his kit had been removed from his body and stacked neatly at his feet, and he could see the sun setting on the ocean through the window on the opposite side of the room.

Oh, and Representative Thalassa was sat on the floor beside him holding his helmet. She must have dozed off during her vigil, he guessed, as her head lolled softly to the side and she snored in a way he could only describe as delicate.

If this was his reward for being injured in the line of duty, Fives decided he would get shot much more often.

Eventually though, the moment of peace was ended by the arrival of Kix. Nura startled awake beside him and flushed brightly when she caught his eye, but this turned into a repressed laugh as Kix poked and prodded at his already sore body.

“A couple centimeters off and that would have done more than just knick your lung, _di’kut_.” Kix chastised him like he planned to have a plasma bolt rip through his shoulder and clip a vital organ. “And you better let this heal before you even _think_ of going back on duty or you’ll have much more to fear than a blaster burn.”

Fives waved his well-meaning brother off with his good arm. “Yeah, yeah. I know the drill, Kix. Where’s Echo?”

Fives felt his is _vod_ ’s absence heavily; the two had yet to spend more than a few days apart in their whole lives.

“On the _Resolute_ debriefing the Chancellor and the senate of how his and his brother’s heroism saved two battalions of clone troopers from destruction, I believe.”

Both him and Kix turned to Nura, who was unfazed by the same face in duplicate staring at her.

“Maybe I’m the lucky one, then.” Fives joked unconvincingly. The thought of standing in front of the senate, even in holo form, was enough to make even the bravest trooper weak in the knees.

“Yeah, real lucky.” Kix snorted as he helped Fives sit up and tied his arm into a sling. “The battle left the _Resolute_ out of commission for a few days, so we are officially stuck here.”

Fives wondered how the most pessimistic trooper he’d ever met became a medic. He’d never been to a planet he’d rather be stuck on more than this one.

“Do not sound so grim, Kix.” It appeared that sometime during his time out, Nura and his brother had exchanged names. “Tomorrow the Atollian council will arrive and the real celebrations will begin.”

Kix muttered complaints about sunburns and sprained ankles as he packed away his medical supplies. As he rose to leave, Kix made sure to give them a final warning. “Before any of that, you need to rest. And I mean _both_ of you.”

“Is he always so serious?”

Fives shifted carefully to face her. “More or less.”

Nura yawned, proving Kix’s ealier point. She was still in the same clothes she wore during the battle and her hair was coming lose from its braid. Fives guessed that the nap she had woken up from was the most amount of sleep she’d gotten in the past two days.

She was still holding his helmet, tracing the blue eel softly with her fingertip. “You saved my life, you know.”

“Well, it is my job, Representative.”

“Nura,” she corrected him. “Just Nura is fine. I know you must save people every other day, but it does mean a lot – to me, at least.”

He met her eyes and wondered how someone like her could spare a thought for a trooper like him. Though her face was flushed under the lines of tattoos that grace her cheeks, shadows under her eyes spoke to her fatigue and the way she sat made her look so small beside him.

He was at a loss for words until she spoke again, looking down to his bucket in her lap. 

“What’s the meaning behind this?” She kept tracing the symbol, her movements slow and captivating.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he started to say but Nura smiled softly in response.

“My people love long stories.”

Fives realised then the markings on her face must be more than a status symbol or decoration. He hoped that one day he would get to hear her story.

“You’d better settle in for a while then, ‘cause this starts way back to my first days in the GAR on Rishi.”

Nura leaned back against his good side, soaking in the details of his brothers and their commanding officer, the attack on the outpost and everything that happened after. At some point, she closed her eyes but still made the right reactions at the right times to the story he wove – perhaps a little more embellished than it had actually happened.

By the end of it though, her weight settled against him and, really, who was he to wake a representative of the senate? Fives closed his eyes and, for the first time in his life, dreamt of what might come after the war.

*

“I don’t even want to know, Fives.”

Echo had been in a foul mood since he returned planet-side to a senate representative slipping away from his _vod_ ’s bedside. Despite Fives’ protests that _really_ nothing happened, and wouldn’t he be the first to tell him anyway if something did happen, Echo had created a holodrama-level story of the previous night in his head.

“Whatever, _vod_ ,” Fives conceded. “Just help me get my boots on.”

At some point after he was shot, the battalion had moved its barracks from the airbase to Acheron, the atoll that protected their original landing site. His brothers greatly appreciated the change, which let them take advantage of the white beaches and surprisingly warm climate that followed the hurricane.

Or so Echo described to him now as he struggled to kit up with one working arm.

Kix had come earlier to slather more bacta on the injury and warn him that any activities that didn’t end in him sitting down doing nothing would result in further and more permanent damage courtesy of his own blaster.

This turned out to be a preamble to the news that the Atollians planned to celebrate the routing out of the Separatists and a traitor starting that afternoon when their civilians returned to the base and the neighboring islands.

“General Skywalker wants us looking sharp for the procession,” Kix had grumbled. “But we have the rest of the day after to enjoy the festivities.”

Fives didn’t feel sharp as he only managed to get on the bottom half of his kit, but he and Echo nonetheless waited to be called to the parade.

The Atollians had afforded them one of their captain’s barracks as thanks for their role in stopping the destruction of their airbase. The small building overlooked the beach and gave them a view of the ocean, shimmering brightly in the midday sun. The wind and rain they arrived in was a distant memory to the scene before him.

On the horizon, the expanse of blue was dotted by growing spots of black. Ships, Fives recognised, but nothing like the airships and transports that had brought the clone forces to the planet. These skimmed across the waves, colourful sails filling with the breeze as they approached the beach.

Growing in the distance behind the barracks, Fives heard singing and the sound of clanging metal making its way to the beach.

“That must be the parade,” Echo remarked just as Captain Rex commed the men to assemble. Echo lead the way out of the building, to the grassy area where the rest of the battalion waited for their hosts.

There wasn’t much time between when they first heard the Atollians to when their forces came noisily past the battalion, singing and cheering in their own language. That was beginning to feel familiar to Fives, who had witnessed a few post-battle celebrations by planet natives. What set the Atollians apart was the noise of their shockspears; everyone that passed the battalion had tied bells, bits of metal, and even a few droid parts to their weapon. They beat their spears on the ground to the timing of their marching song, sending a clamor of noise across the island as they moved.

For all the noise the battalion made, though, none of the sounds they made was as distracting as the sight of Nura, who led the procession.

She had put on a short, light green robe over her black tunic and leggings, which Fives now recognised as the standard base-layer for all Atollian clothing. Like all the soldiers surrounding her, Nura’s hair was free of its braid and her head was crowned with bright yellow flowers.

“Did anything you read in the briefing mention what in the hell is going here?”

“Shut up.”

Fives had meant the question seriously, but before he was given the chance to respond the captain signalled them to move out and follow the Atollians down to the beach.

Sailed-ships dotted the beach and from where the battalion stopped, Fives could now see they were ships in the truest sense of the word.

Hundreds of civvies were aboard the wooden vessels, singing and cheering in response to their soldiers on the beach. He saw them throw the same yellow flowers that decorated Nura’s hair into the water.

Eventually, Nura, poised at the head of the parade and closest to the ocean, raised her spear over her head. The bells she had tied on chimed as the crowds on the water and the beach fell silent.

Someone, though Fives couldn’t see who, called out from one of the ships.

“ _Níki_!” Nura cried in response kind and punctuated her sentence by the chiming of her bells.

As if cued by her word, the original call was taken up by each person on the ships, singing the alien phrase in one voice.

Nura’s own response was drowned out by the soldiers around her, crying that same word and shaking their spears until all Fives could hear was metal clanging against metal.

The civvies kept on singing as they drew their boats closer to shore and landed them in the white sand. A great host of men, women, and children clambered down from the sides, carrying assortments of baskets brimming with food and flowers with them.

The Atollians on the beach took that as a signal to break their ranks, streaming onto the beach to reunite with their families and friends.

“Is that it?” He heard someone behind him ask.

But Fives and his brothers remained in parade rest, unsure of what was happening next and where they were supposed to go. Fives kept his eyes on Nura, though he eventually lost her in the crowd until she led an old woman to where Captain Rex stood with the Jedi and Senator Amidala.

The old woman held tightly to Nura’s arm and balanced her weight between the young woman and a wooden staff she carried on her opposite side. She was wrapped in a white robe and her face was a canvas for an impressive array of tattoos. Even her brown hands had been covered in the same swirling designs.

“Echo! Fives!” The captain called them forward and they moved in unison to meet him.

“This is prime minister Vráchos,” Senator Amidala presented them to the woman, who bowed in greeting.

Like Nura, Senator Amidala was draped in bright yellow flowers though her elaborate Nubian dress was out of place on the beach.

“She extends her thanks to you both for your actions and invites you to join the head table for the celebration.”

Instead of waiting for a response, Prime Minister Vráchos said something in Atollian to Nura who nodded and beckoned the two men forward.

“You have been given the honour of escorting the Prime Minister to her seat,” she relayed.

Echo, ever unsure of acting without the reg manual to guide him, looked to General Skywalker to save them.

The general only smiled. “Oh no, Echo. You two get to be the heroes tonight while myself and the rest of us here get some well-deserved rest.”

Defeated, Echo helped the old woman to her seat.

*

Sometime the night before, the Atollian soldiers had fashioned a dais and covered seating areas from trees that had fallen during the hurricane. The civvies brought food and drinks and music with them to celebrate the liberation of their planet’s most valued resource.

Fives and his _vod_ sat at the head of it all, enjoying the break from eating rations in the _Resolute_ ’s crowded mess. Although it was strange to be so set apart from their other brothers, Fives enjoyed the chance to be close once again with Nura.

Whether instructed by Vráchos or of her own volition he would never find out, she had taken it upon herself to explain the Atollian food, songs, and customs as they ate.

“So, you just kill politicians when you don’t think they’ve done a good job?” Fives grimaced as his _vod_ ’s bold question. Nura had explained to them the meaning behind the current song being sung as being her people’s most important story.

“No, of course not!” Nura sighed. “The _Vasiliad_ is about power and obligation; that rulers have an obligation to their people and their people hold power over their rulers!”

Fives had to admit that he agreed with Echo on this point as Nura explained the garroting death of the last king of Atolli Prime at the hands of his counsel. He wondered just what kind of political system could exist on a planet that liked to strangle leaders who gained just a bit too much power.

Before him or Echo could respond, their discussion was cut off by the prime minster rising from her seated position. She was such a small woman that even standing among her seated people did not make her look much taller.

“What she is trying to say,” her focus was on Echo and Fives as she said this, leaning one again on her staff. “is that we Atollians love our ideals and dying to preserve them.”

The sun had only just started to set on the water, but she announced her retirement for the night. “Celebrations are for the young,” she said to Nura she made to stand. “And while I might be old, I am not feeble.”

She patted Nura’s shoulder and whispered something to her before leaving.

The prime minister’s departure was a signal to the rest of the Atollians to begin the next phase of their celebrations. Some of the older civilians left for the night, taking with them the very youngest of the children. Those who remained broke out into games and more singing and passing around sweet wine.

“It’s called _krasi_ ,” Nura told them as she poured them each a glass. “Careful, it’s stronger than it tastes.”

At some point after the wine had been broken out one of his brothers, Fives guessed Rex, pulled out a bolo-ball and an impromptu tournament started between teams of clones and the Atollian soldiers.

“Echo!” Rex called him over to where the teams were divided on the beach. “We need you to even out the numbers!”

Grumbling under his breath, Echo stood up to join them.

“Don’t be so upset, Echo. At least he has Commander Tano keeping score – she never lets anyone cheat.”

Fives watched as his brothers jostled with the Atollians on the beach. In the setting sun, he wished he could join in but the ache in his shoulder and the knowing glare from Kix passing by made him think otherwise.

Instead, he turned his attention back to Nura who was also watching the game intently. The dying sunlight cast a warm glow over her face, making her tattoos stand out against the brown of her skin.

He didn’t understand how one person could make him like he belonged in a place he had never been before.

“Do you –”

She startled at his voice, then flushed.

“Sorry,” he tried again. “You don’t have to sit here just ‘cause you feel bad. You must have people you want to see before we leave.”

Nura looked quizzically at him, before laughing at a joke he didn’t realise he had made.

“Oh no, I’m not from here.” She pointed to the top part of her tattoos, a row of arrows point to the centre of her face. “My family is from the southern archipelago; it’s on the other side of the planet. I just did my military training on Archeron. Most of the people here are strangers to me.”

Fives traced her markings with his eyes. “So, all of this,” he gestured to his own face. “Says that?”

“Sort of. It is meant to be a record of every important thing in my life,” she gave him a small smile. “But it is nice to have someone look at my face and not see my life’s story.”

They spent the next few hours talking to one another, each describing a life to the other that seemed impossibly foreign. As the sun crept lower and his brothers’ cheering grew softer, Fives realised he had shared more of his life with her than he had with anyone except for Echo.

Though some continued to celebrate on the beach, Nura stood and stretched. “Take a walk with me?” He followed her gladly, tucking her against his side as if the night’s air wasn’t a warm breeze.

The path they followed wound through the tall trees and grass that bordered the beach and would eventually take them back to where the barracks were. Light from fires on the beach and the three rising moons illuminated the ground before them. Fives could see the same yellow flowers that decorated Nura’s hair dotted the grass around them, apparently unbothered by the hurricane that had blown through only a day earlier.

Unable to stop himself, he picked one and offered it to her with a question. “What kind of flower is this?”

She accepted it from him shyly, then twirled its stem in her fingers. “It’s called a saffra flower. It’s the symbol of my people because it grows everywhere.”

He blanched. “Please don’t tell me I just insulted your ancestors or something because I picked one.”

She laughed, meeting his nervous gaze with her own. “I think they would be fine with losing one small flower.”

She gave him a devious look then took the flower in one hand and she motioned for him to lean down and tucked it behind his ear.

“There, now we match.”

Not for the first time, Fives wondered what he did to deserve her attention. Her hand lingered on his cheek and her eyes shone in the moonlight.

“Can I…” His throat was dry, and he tried to swallow. He felt like such a _di’kut_ , freezing up in front of a beautiful woman.

Before he gathered the courage to try his question again, Nura pulled his face toward hers and kissed him gently.

*

Eventually the two regained their path, making their way slowly to the barracks. Knowing his brother had seen the two of them leave together, Fives doubted Echo would try to sleep in their room that night.

“Do you want to come in?” He whispered against her lips. She nodded in response and he led them inside.

There was an awkward tension that lingered in the air. Fives knew there were vague rules against ‘fraternization’ but this was something he’d never dreamed of. And he wanted to be sure that it was Nura making the decisions, not the wine they had both drank or the high from saving a planet.

Those doubts were pushed away as she kissed him deeply. The night ended in a flurry of clothes, some hisses of discomfort when he tried to move his shoulder, and some groans of _not_ discomfort when Nura settled against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a review, if you can! Feedback helps me fix my writing :)


	4. Reunion

**_Somewhere in the Outer Rim_ **

_“This failure is an unacceptable loss, Shu Mai.”_

_“But Lord Dooku, we did not know Captain Hama would be discovered! You assured us that if no Atollian leadership survive the initial attack we would be successful!”_

_“I assured nothing. Your incompetence has cost our movement uninhibited access to the dedlanite mines. Fortunately, I have a solution that may procure our desired results without open war.”_

****

The _Resolute_ shook as it docked. After limping through hyperspace, Fives was glad to be back on solid ground. A space battle was the worst kind of mission – all of the danger, but none of the action for the troopers who could do nothing except pass the time in their barracks.

The damage would put an end to their month-long of the outer rim, finally allowing for a long-overdue shore leave. The excitement had rippled through the battalion as they approached Coruscant. Torrent company had already set up their own arm-wrestling tournament for prime spots on the leave rotation, while lookers-on placed drink bets.

“You getting in on this, Fives?” Ridge called him over to where their brothers cheered on Jesse as he fought against another in a long line of shinies.

Though his shoulder was fully healed, Fives knew better to risk being caught by Kix who had only pushed his return to combat through on the condition that he not do anything stupid.

“Nah, I’ll let Jesse keep his winning streak!”

That set off rounds of goading and boos from his brothers, hoping to witness a rematch between the two. The last time he and Jesse had arm wrestled, he broke Jesse’s wrist – though his brother never admitted it to Kix or their Captain. If anything, the matter had been settled when Jesse shaved his eyebrows in his sleep the day before an inspection. The Captain had ordered them to ‘knock it the _kriff_ off’ through his laughter.

Besides, Fives thought to himself, I have better places to be than 79s. He only needed to gather to courage to actual comm her.

*

“Do you really think she’s going to respond to you?” Echo didn’t even need to look up from his datapad or stand up from his place on the lower bunk to know his brother was once again looking to his wristcomm, waiting for an answer.

“Shut up, _di’kut_ ,” Fives hissed back. Relationships with civvies were frowned up already, but comming a senate representative on a military device for less than professional reasons could land him in serious trouble. Making sure no one around the barracks heard, he poked his head over the side of the bunk. “‘Sides, she’s just busy doing senate stuff – I know she’ll respond, why else give me her number?”

Echo rolled his eyes. “She’s probably regretted that the moment she left. What if she changed her number? Are you sure that’s even real?”

Fives ignored him and jumped down from his bunk. “I’m taking a walk!”

*

Nura felt alone in the universe.

She had aided Republic forces to retake her planet’s most important resource. She had uncovered one of the biggest political scandals in her planet’s history. She had, somehow, fallen into bed with altogether too-charming clone trooper.

And the Senate just expected her to return to Coruscant and get back to work.

Which, despite everything, she did. She got back on the _Resolute_ and pushed down the wave of emotions that threatened to turn her into a wreck of anger and disbelief.

She even managed to not think of the trooper, Fives, who had smiled so sweetly at her in the morning it broke her heart. Some sentimental part of her that believed in a kinder galaxy had him her personnel comm frequency. He would never use it, she was certain because she was just some girl, wasn’t she? And he would forget about her, or he would be stationed in the outer rim, or the worst would happen, and she would never hear him say her name again.

“Tea, Nura!” The senator’s voice broke through her thinking.

“Yes, senator.” She responded, rising from her small desk at the entrance to the Atollian delegation’s office to make her way to the kitchenette.

Hero or not, she was still at the bottom rung.

She rolled her neck as the kettle boiled, stiff from the day of proof-reading the latest piece of legislation that the Senator had drafted and screening the hundreds of military updates that came through every day. Nura was counting down the hours until she could go home and rest.

Just as she set the tea down for the Senator, her datapad _pinged_ with the newest updates.

“Nura,” the Senator drawled without looking up from her work. “You know I absolutely detest that sound.”

“Yes Senator, my apologies.” Nura bowed her head in deference. The end of this week could not come soon enough for her.

“That’s all,” she waved her away. 

Nura picked up the offending device as she returned to her desk. The device was meant to be silent under every circumstance except –

Except for news of the _Resolute_ ’s return to Coruscant.

She scrolled through the bulletin, taking in the news of its most recent battle and its expected return timeframe after taking damage from Separatist forces in the Outer Rim. Officer casualties were listed towards the end, each name telling a short story of who each person was, where they were from, and who they left behind.

Nura sighed at the last item on the list: _36 Clone Troopers lost from the 501 st, 71 lost from the 332nd, 29 lost from the _Resolute _._

Even in death the clones were not given the dignity of being called by their names.

She pushed the thought down. Best to get on with her work and not think of the man who probably never gave her a second thought.

*

By the time the Senator told her and her colleagues to leave for the weekend, Nura was nearly cross-eyed.

“Coming with us, great hero?” One of those colleagues asked from the door where the rest were waiting.

“Not tonight, Sion.”

The last thing she wanted to do was spend her free time in a too-expensive bar with people who liked to remind her just _where_ her position was. No matter what they might call her to her face, Nura knew each one held a distaste for actions that threatened their own place in the senator’s retinue.

Atollian or not, all career politicians were the same.

Instead of going out, Nura planned a night in bed with her last bottle of _krasi_ and the newest romantic holodrama. The Senator’s political machinations for her career be damned.

She finished the last of her duties in the fog of routine, straightening out the senator’s desk and arranging the datapads for her colleagues’ return. She pressed her comm as she cleaned, listening to the messages left due to the Senator’s noiseless office policy.

The first was from Padmé, inviting her to dinner the next day, the second from her mother telling her about the latest hurricane to hit the southern archipelago, and the last –

“Representative – uh, Nura,” the blue figure nervously stumbled over her name. “We’re back planetside. That is, the 501st is back, and if you wanted to see me…”

Somewhere in the background someone laughed, and Fives hissed to where she couldn’t see. “Shut _up_ , Echo. My leave nights are scheduled for this weekend. You can comm back me on this frequency – if you want.” He remained there for a moment longer, almost as if he was unsure how to end the transmission before it cut off.

It appeared her plans had just changed for the better.

*

Music from 79s radiated through the air.

Fives tried to calm himself as he waited in the alley. It was early in the night, barely passed the evening day cycle, but the bar was already piling full of clones freshly off duty. He had only managed to pull this leave duty by persuading Kix that scrubbing carbon scoring off the _Resolute_ would be harmful to his only just healed shoulder and that some time off early on would be better.

The medic always had final say, and Fives had only sweetened the deal by promising to get back at Jesse on Kix’s behalf. The _di’kut_ had managed to switch a few of the med droids’ communication language to Huttese and it had taken nearly half a day to change them back.

He was currently debating between filling Jesse’s boots with used bacta or leaving a couple _meiloorun_ under his mattress before their next ground battle. He was engrossed in the decision between instant and delayed gratification when a familiar voice called out to him.

“I hope you don’t mean to wear that armour all night, trooper.” Nura was a vision in green and white, though she blushed once she realised the implication of her words. “You’ll have to blend in a bit more.”

“I had thought you might want to go in for a drink,” Fives suggested.

Nura gestured to her loose tunic and the robe she had pulled over her head to hide her hair. “I’m not exactly dressed for that kind of establishment. Besides, I have a feeling you’ve never seen much of Coruscant outside of army hangers and the entertainment district.”

Fives felt like a true _di’kut_ then. Of course, someone like her wouldn’t want to spend time some dumpy clone bar. Not to mention that the senate would probably frown open such open fraternization.

“Sorry, I don’t really have much else besides the armour and my blacks.”

She just smiled and held up a set of speeder keys. “I figured as much, which is why I drove here with a set of clothes for you.”

Fives’ initial thrill at being given the chance to wander Coruscant in civvies’ clothing on the arm of the most beautiful girl on the planet was severely dampened by Nura’s definition of clothing.

He left his armour in her speeder, and _really_ he was being kind at calling that pile of junk a speeder, where she had draped the same style of long Atollian robe she wore when they first met over his blacks.

“I don’t like red.”

“Well, it’s maroon and my choices were limited.” She adjusted the robe over his head before looking him up and down. “I can’t do anything about the tattoos or the eyes, but to anyone from Coruscant you look just like an Atollian gentleman.”

No matter what she said he looked like, he felt like a child playing pretend.

But then Nura smiled and her eyes shone in the lights of the city and he knew he’d do anything to see that look again.

*

Nura led him through the walkways of the city, straight past the blinding lights of the entertainment district far past to where he or any other off-duty clone dared to go.

“Are you kidnapping me, representative?” He asked as she led him down another alley she claimed was a short-cut.

“Of course!” She replied. “I intend on selling you to the Separatists I think, or maybe I’ll ransom you back to the army.”

Feeling bold, he reached for her arm, stopping them and pulling her close.

“What will you do to me before then?” He whispered and she kissed him in response. He used his free hand to caress her cheek as he deepened their embrace.

Eventually they broke apart for air and she started down the alley again, leading him by the arm.

“We’re just about there,” she told him as they rounded the corner out of the alley.

“Here we are!”

Here, it turned out, was a crowded night market. Humans and aliens of all races crowded the stalls that sold food, trinkets, droid parts, and more things than he knew the words for. Somewhere music was playing, and children darted out from the feet of their parents trailing ribbons and kites behind them.

Fives had never known anything like this could ever exist on a planet that seemed as sophisticated as Coruscant.

“What is this place?”

“The mid-rim traders hold a special market on the first weekend of each month.” Nura smiled and they moved through the crowd together, her holding his arm tightly as if the crowd was going to part them at any moment.

“Come on, this way.”

She pulled him toward a booth selling little cakes he recognised from the celebration months prior. An old woman sat at the booth, wrapped in the same style of robes as him and Nura. She grinned when Nura called out in Atollian to her.

“Follow my lead,” she whispered to him as they reached the booth.

“Representative Thalassa! It is so good to serve you again.” The old woman bowed her head without looking towards them. Her eyes, though as pale as Nura’s, held no recognition of the movement in front of her.

Nura still bowed to the blind woman in return. “I told you before that my name is perfectly fine to use.”

“And I told you to call me _giagia_ , my girl.” She laughed at her own joke. “Here, I made special ones just for you. I knew you wouldn’t miss tonight!”

“Is it alright if I share these with my friend?” Nura asked the question sweetly, pulling him close though _giagia_ couldn’t see.

With the way her face lit up, he would have thought Nura had offered the old woman a million credits. “A _friend_?” Then she let out a string of what could only be questions in Atollian, directed to both him and Nura.

Nura laughed and responded for him. “Yes, he just arrived from _Néos_!” Then she lowered her voice, as if revealing some secret. “But you know how they are on that particular island, no respect for the old ways. He barely speaks a word of old Atollian.”

The old woman grumbled in response, shaking her head as if she knew well what Nura was talking about. Then, she shook her finger at him. “You must have Nura teach you! She speaks like a storyteller from the days of my youth.”

Nura blushed at the compliment. He pulled her close, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

“Yes, ma’am.” His response sent the old woman smiling again and she handed them each their own serving of cakes. Before they were able to leave, she made him swear their next conversation would be in her language.

As they moved down the row of stalls, Fives’ curiosity overcame him. “I feel like there was a motive behind that, that I don’t understand.”

Nura smiled. “I was hoping you’d ask. _Giagia_ Galena is the most well-respected gossip among the Atollian diaspora here on Coruscant.” She adjusted the robe on him again, smoothing out the wrinkles that had formed. “I figured that I should get ahead of the rampant gossip and speculation that seems to plague my people.”

“You’re a true politician.” He meant it as a sincere compliment, but he could admit to himself at least that her amount of forethought was slightly terrifying.

They passed through more stalls, looking at all the market had to offer. More than once, an overzealous trader would point out to him this trinket or that “for your wife!” Each time it happened he felt his face go red as he stammered out that they weren’t married. Nura only laughed at his blustering.

Hours passed. The market slowly emptied as Coruscant’s nightcycle continued on, fake stars appearing in the domed sky. At some point they had found a corner to hide in and he kissed her gently in the dark.

“What time do I have to return you?” She whispered as he kissed her neck, his beard scratching at her skin.

“The Captain doesn’t do roll call ‘til 0800.” He replied into the smooth expanse of her skin.

“Then I suppose we have time to go back to my place?”

*

The morning cycle on Coruscant started at 0500. The soldier in him snapped awake the moment the first streaks of light appeared in the sky and wouldn’t let him rest, though Nura still slept beside him.

He watched the heavy speeder traffic streak by the window. Even in the early hours of the morning, the city never slowed down.

The lights racing by danced over Nura’s back. Fives reached out to touch where the light hit her skin.

“That tickles.” Nura stirred and turned over to look at him.

He traced a scar on her shoulder, the white standing out against the brown of her skin. “How’d you get this?”

“Live weapons training my last year in the planet guard.” She scrunched up her nose. “I was never really good at it.”

“I don’t know, I saw you taking down enough clankers with that spear of yours.”

She laughed. “Droids are one thing, but people are something else entirely.”

He felt her eyes tracing his chest. He knew he had his own collection of scars.

“Should I even ask or are they too many to remember?”

“Too many to remember.”

Nura traced a few of them, blaster burns and vibroblade cuts and training accidents moving under her finger. She leaned into his chest and kissed a few of them.

“What are you doing?”

She gave him a wicked grin. “Giving you some better memories.”

He leaned back into the bed as her lips moved over his torso. “What did I do to deserve you?”

She lifted her head up to look at him as if he’d said something stupid.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

He thought for a moment.

“There about a million and half guys just like me.”

She scoffed, though there was no malice in it. “No, not like that. Just – how you are, right now. You care more about other people then you let on.”

Fives didn’t know how to respond to her statement. He cared about his brothers, that was certain. And his general, he supposed. But he didn’t think he knew enough about life outside the GAR to understand how someone could _not_ care about other people.

Sensing his confusion, Nura continued.

“Why did you it?” She moved back to sit beside him, leaning into his chest. Her skin was warm against his own and she reached for his hand, far more timid than she had any right to be.

“Do what?”

He looked at the way their hands fit together, his own callused from years of weapons training and hers, small and soft.

“A man held a detonator and was ready to kill himself and everyone else on that airbase. And you saved me.”

Nura looked at him as if that was somehow a remarkable thing. He felt fear rising in his chest. Everything he had done for on that day was what anyone would have done in his place. And he told her just that, despite his certainty she would forget him for it.

“It was a joint effort, really. ‘Sides, who wouldn’t have done that?”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“Fives, I’ve been prepared to die for my planet since I was fourteen years old. And if it were my people on that platform, they would have let me.”

He suddenly remembered the story she told them about the last Atollian King and what the prime minister had said to him. Realisation dawned on him that self-sacrifice was not, of course, limited to the clone troopers of the GAR.

He pushed the thought down and instead kissed her hand.

They stayed that way for a long moment afterwards, soaking in the brightening sky of the city-planet. Finally, he asked the question that had been burning in his mind since the night before.

“Can I see you again?”

She smiled in response. “I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you can!


	5. Intrigue

**Chapter Five – Intrigue**

* * *

The synthetic light of Coruscant’s day-cycle filtered through Nura’s window, pulling her from a deep sleep. She groaned and stretched, regretting not fully closing the blinds the night before. It was a quiet morning and the empty pillow beside her sent a wave of sadness through her body.

Fives’ first visit had given her the distraction she had needed from the monotony of her role in the senator’s office and his friendship reminded her that she was not alone in the galaxy. Now, two months later, he was a welcome change to her routine of the past two years that made her feel like the young person she was.

But a few days of shore leave here and there could never be enough. Nura wanted now more than ever to bring an end to the war that kept them apart.

Pushing those thoughts down, Nura reluctantly crawled out of bed and readied herself for the day. Routine was ever her friend and she went through her morning tasks like a perfectly programmed droid.

She adjusted her _himation_ , wondering if anyone would even notice its rich blue colour that was a sharp change from her normal shades of green. Fives had picked out the fabric for her during the last night market and it gave her a small piece of comfort to wear it now.

Nura recalled how Fives had pulled the fabric from a pile as she had sorted through various shades of green, plopping it in front of her with pride. The dark blue was the same colour that decorated his and his brothers’ armour, Nura knew, and Fives had given her a triumphant smile as he told her that “We can match.”

“Blue isn’t really my colour.”

Fives had rolled his eyes, not intent on giving up so quickly. “Why all the green, anyways?”

Nura _hmm_ ed in response, distracted by the selection of beaded and embroidered fabrics she was sifting through.

“You mean why do I always wear green?”

Fives drew closer to her as her eyes traced over the colourful beads sewn on the dark blue, swirling flowers trailing along its borders.

“Senator Revma likes to colour-code us so she doesn’t have to remember who we are.”

He was next to her then, altogether too comfortable in the role of salesmen as he responded, “Really?”

“Oh yes, we have a purple person, an orange, a black and white stripes-”

“And you’re just messing with me now.” Fives grabbed her from behind, circling his arms around her, and pulling her away from the booth. He hadn’t cared about the crowd around them or the merchant who rolled their eyes and muttered about young people ‘these days.’

Nura had eventually yielded. The blue fabric had made a pretty _himation_ after all, the yellow and white flowers of its borders bringing back memories of their time on Atolli Prime.

Pulling out of her thoughts, Nura fixed the drape of her garment and continued on in her routine. Though it was still early in the morning, she knew getting into the office early would allow her to catch up on some work. Caf in one hand and datapad in the other, Nura was content with the state of the world as she made her way to her speeder.

*

For all the good that getting into her office had done, Nura was sent racing back planet-side in the wake of yet another unnecessary political scandal.

Alone in the office, she had turned on the morning holonews as background noise to her sorting and filing. The weather report drawled on, changing into an ad for mechanic’s shop before a breaking news banner flashed across the projection. The anchor droid had Nura’s full attention as she looked up from her work.

“ _We now bring you the breaking story of potential treason straight from the Senate itself! This morning, a leaked intelligence report names a high-ranking member of Senator Ana Revma of Atolli Prime delegation, one Representative_ _Lilia Prásinos, as a key figure in a Separatist spy-ring. The Senate has yet to confirm or deny the validity of this report…”_

Nura’s heart fell to her stomach. Another political scandal was the last thing her people needed. Whether or not the Senate ever verified the report, she knew her planet was in an increasingly precarious situation. How could Senator Revma maintain her influence when she couldn’t control her own people? And Nura knew exactly who to blame.

Lilia Prásinos, a catty middle-aged woman who had hated Nura from the day she arrived, was considered next in line for the office of senator. It was an open secret in their office and in the wider Senate building that she had at one point been friendly with Senators who were now high-ranking members of the Separatist leadership.

But even Nura was shocked at the realisation that she was in the prime situation for someone who wanted to help friends on the other side.

If Nura could figure that out, she knew the fallout from the scandal was sure to make all their lives miserable for the foreseeable future.

Nothing could stamp out the sense of impending doom in Senator Revma’s office that morning as the senator’s staff waited for her arrival. Nura greeted her colleagues as they entered, exchanging tense pleasantries as all eyes stayed fixed on the door.

Lilia, however, was noticeably absent.

When the Senator finally arrived, Nura held her breath as she swept through the office, sat at her desk, and called for the morning reports. Nura had expected at least some shouting, maybe a few choice words, but the Senator was seemingly above emotional responses.

She didn’t even speak to Nura until it was time for her mid-morning tea. Without looking up from her reports, Senator Revma addressed her in the same tone as if she was describing the latest weather report.

“Nura, you will be taking on some of Riatt’s tasks as we transition into retaining a smaller staff following Lilia’s _resignation_.”

The Senator drew the last word out, placing a finality into the word that Nura knew was a warning to all in the office. For their purposes, Lilia Prásinos had resigned unexpectedly and would be missed. To imply anything else would be putting yourself at risk.

Nura set the cup and saucer down carefully on the desk. “Are there any specific tasks you would like me to-”

Senator Revma looked up from her work, eyes flashing in annoyance. “I think that would be for the two of to figure out, wouldn’t you?” She waved her away.

Nura bowed, berating herself for not recognising when to bite her tongue. She had been in this office far too long to be asking stupid questions. Swallowing her pride, Nura presented herself to Riatt.

Though only a few years older than Nura herself, Riatt had held onto her position in the office hierarchy for years before Nura joined the Senator’s staff. She was the best policy writer in their delegation and clung to the Senator’s favourite, Sion, like a remora to a shark. She was also the one who treated Nura like her personal secretary.

Her promotion after Lilia’s departure only made her more smug.

“I will need you to start sending me the same reports you give to the Senator and you will also now be the one who takes the minutes.”

“Is that just at our meetings or every meeting of the Senate?”

Riatt looked at her as if she’d asked whether the sky was blue that day.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”

Riatt pulled a stack of datapads from her desk.

“I need all of these edited and submitted to the Senator by tomorrow afternoon’s senate session.”

Nura accepted them with a bow of her head. There was enough work in the stack to keep her busy all week; it would another long day for her. She turned to leave.

“Oh, and Nura? The Senator expects us to represent the greatness of our people in _every_ session of the Senate. Please do not dress like you’ve just crawled out of the lower levels tomorrow.”

*

Nura spent the rest of her morning in a flurry of writing, preparing for the next day’s senate meeting through an ever-expanding series of legislative documents, minute by minute schedules, and political speech writing. She took her new, expanded workload with the grace and deference of a true Atollian, habitually serving others.

However exhausting her work was, Nura knew that she would always choose her people over her own comfort.

It was in this flurry of writing that Padmé found her, reminding Nura that she had agreed to catch up with the senator the week before. Her growling stomach, meanwhile, reminded her that she also hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Looking around the room, she realised her own coworkers had already departed for their lunch breaks.

Padmé gave her a soft smile. “Let’s take this meeting to the cafeteria.” Nura was grateful for her tact.

The Senate cafeteria was less of the mess hall that Nura remembered from her time in the Atollian military and more of a Coruscanti restaurant in miniature. Serving droids led them to a table, offering a selection of delicacies from across the galaxy. Murmurs of conversation and the clanking of cutlery floated around the room, while the scent of a hundred different dishes cloyed at her nose.

Nura tried to avoid taking her lunch there, preferring instead to eat at her desk away from the crowds of politicians eager to forward their own careers.

“I heard about your delegation’s recent loss.” Padmé’s tone was mournful, as if recognising the same pattern of betrayal that Nura knew spelt only trouble for her people.

Nura nodded. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time, either. I fear Senator Revma’s proposed freedom of refugee movement bill will be lost in the fallout.”

The serving droid reappeared, interrupting Padmé’s response to deliver their main courses. Nura picked at her lunch, the combined weight of her stress and her new duties pushing her hunger away.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Padmé tried to meet her gaze and Nura couldn’t help but look away. She felt guilty for lying to her mentor, who now was really the first friend she had managed to make in her entire two years on Coruscant.

“I-” Nura searched for the right words. “My partner is away constantly because of the war. He’s only on planet for a few days at a time and I hate to think that this new betrayal might prolong the war.”

Padmé nodded, as if she understood her worries. Nura berated herself as she realised that she had never really asked Padmé about her life outside politics.

Encouraged by her friend’s understanding, Nura continued. “And it doesn’t help that I’m now expected to do the work of two people while Senator Revma puts out the political fires. I feel like all I’ve done since joining this delegation is serve tea and revise speeches while half the galaxy is at war!”

“I’ve felt the same things myself,” Padmé nodded in understanding at her frustration. “Sometimes it feels like for every step forward we take, the war keeps dragging us back to where we were before or worse.”

“Exactly! It’s as if everything we do is now secondary to winning battles.” The new perspective breathed life back into Nura.

“I fear our focus on the war will blind us to the needs of democracy.” Padmé agreed, her voice firm yet sad in a way Nura was only beginning to understand.

Padmé gave her another kind smile before changing the subject.

“I hear you’ll be joining the session tomorrow.”

Nura picked at her lunch. It was another sore spot for her, though more understandable given the present circumstances.

“All I know is that we’re going to be ripped apart. First, one of our top military leaders attempts to kill two battalions of clones, then our senator’s highest-ranking aide and confidante turns Separatist informant.”

Padmé tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it failed to reach her eyes. Even she could see the difficulty the Atollians faced.

“I’m certain it won’t be as awful as you imagine.”

*

Somehow, the Senate session was worse than Nura’s mind could conjure.

Nura had tried to start the day right, arriving early to the office once again in her nicest _himation_ to deposit datapads to the right desks and review Riatt’s notetaking style for the minutes. She had even treated herself to a breakfast pastry, which she ate with tea at her desk while waiting for her colleagues to arrive.

Sion arrived next, wearing his own finery and barely acknowledging her existence as he swept by to prepare for the session. Riatt and Senator Revma appeared in their own time, heads bent over a datapad as they discussed the motions that they would be presenting on easing trade regulations.

It was all setting up to be a normal, calm day and Nura was fine with that.

The first break in her day came when Senator Revma called her to her desk. Nura had stood, a hundred thoughts racing through her mind as she thought about all of the things she could have done incorrectly or not at all. The Senator was not someone who gave praise or even acknowledgement of tasks well done – the only reason she ever deigned to speak at her subordinates was when one of them stepped out of line.

“Yes, Senator?”

She didn’t even condescend to look up from her work.

“I had hoped that after this long in my service you would know that anything you do outside of this office has an effect on our entire delegation.”

Nura’s heart dropped into her chest. The gossipmongers of Coruscant could, and often did, tear apart the careers of hopeful politicians for any perceived social transgressions. Transgressions such as being in a relationship with the _wrong sort_ of people.

Had someone realised just who Fives was? Nura wasn’t sure.

“Senator, I –”

“Your friendship with Senator Amidala is valuable,” Nura nearly fainted in relief. “But it reflects poorly on this office to so publicly declare our allegiance to such controversial figures.”

Before she could object, the Senator dismissed her with a wave of her hand.

Nura made her way to her desk, head hung in shame as if she was a child sent to her room for fighting in school. The senator’s accusations stung, not only as an indictment of her political savvy but for emphasising the self-serving nature of their political sphere.

It was this ethical dilemma that led Nura to voice her doubts to Riatt when the other woman ran through their agenda for the current senate session.

Riatt responded in the tactful way of an experienced politician.

“Senator Amidala has powerful friends and powerful enemies. If we are to move our own initiatives forward, we must toe the party lines, yes?”

Nura’s confusion only deepened. From what she could see, Senator Amidala was beloved in the Senate. Unlike other polarising figures, Amidala had only those who admired her and those who tolerated her – but no real enemies. Was it not her kidnapping by Count Dooku that final straw that began the Clone Wars?

Riatt, for the first time Nura could remember, looked apologetic.

“We all have to do things we don’t want, for the good of our people at the least.”

Nura nodded, still not entirely convinced of the morality of it all.

The rest of the morning passed in the same tense calmness – which Nura was absolutely fine with that as they entered the Senate arena, received the order of speaking, and prepared for a day of ratifying bills and voting on motions.

The calm was broken by the first speaker of the day.

Senator Revma had once described Senator Mee Deechi as a “vile, spider of a man whose self-importance was only rivalled in absurdity by his ridiculous hair piece.”

Nura couldn’t help but agree as she watched the pale man lead his speech with a recounting of the unprecedented loss of resources since the war began due to political interference, theft, and open battles.

“Which is why, with a heavy heart, I am making a motion to invoke the wartime right of the Republic to seize control of those assets that are not properly protected.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then, a cacophony of sounds – cheers and hisses, applaud and indignation.

Nura joined the leagues of aides in immediately pulling up the relevant documents, checking that _yes, senator that is legal_ and _yes, senator I will double check_.

Senator Revma signalled a reply as Mas Amedda called for order.

“This is a preposterous overstepping of democratic process!” A round of cheers punctuated her statement. “My people will not condone any course of action that forces a military presence onto unwilling systems.”

Nura saw the trap as soon as Deechi flashed a sinister smile towards the Atollian delegation.

“Were your people not accepting of our Grand Army when your own military failed to protect your mines? Was it not your own mismanagement that led to tons of dedlanite landing into Separatist hands?

“My good people,” he placed a hand over his heart as if to signal his own grief. “It is unacceptable that we deal with these losses after the fact! Prevention is the only way to keep the Separatist army in check; we must prevent losses _before_ they happen.”

Senator Revma spluttered a response but was ignored as the debate moved through the arena.

Eventually a recess was called in the debate by Chancellor Palpatine.

“We must return to this most _important_ issue at a later time when all sides are better prepared. I propose a debate in two weeks after which we can vote on the Republic’s course of action.”

He dismissed them after, like a child-minder sending off a rowdy class to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the timeline:  
> Chapters 1-3: Between "Rookies" and "Downfall of a Droid"   
> Chapter 4: Between "The Gungan General" and "Jedi Crash"  
> Chapter 5: During "Trespass"
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please comment if you can!


	6. Brilliant

**Chapter Six – Brilliant**

“Worst haircut?”

Fives leaned back into his chair, balancing it on its two back legs. The mess was empty save for the little Torrent Company group, who were passing was what were supposed to be rest hours playing sabacc. Killing transport time back to Coruscant from Orto Plutonia had devolved into what had become a recurring series of ranking their brothers. 

In their half-kitted state, tossing cards, ration bars, and insults at each other, Fives could almost pretend that they weren’t fighting a war.

Fives sat just outside of the circle, unwilling to lose any more credits to Kix’s winning streak, throwing out topics as he broke off pieces of a ration bar.

“Gree!” Jesse laughed, then grimaced as he looked at his new hand of cards.

Echo finished dealing out cards, nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, Gree no question.”

Fives threw the ration pieces into the air, trying to catch them in his mouth. He thought a moment before asking.

“What about…worst tattoo?”

Echo looked at Jesse.

“I’m sorry _vod_ but –”

“Are you serious? Have you even seen what Hardcase did to his face last rotation?”

Kix reached out to rub the cog emblazoned on his _vod_ ’s face. “I think I heard a girl at 79s call it _tacky_ , if I recall correctly.”

Jesse swatted his hand away.

“I change my answers, Kix is the worst for everything.”

Laughter filled the air, but was soon replaced by the concentration-driven silence of a difficult round of sabacc. From where he sat, Fives could see Jesse and Kix both had garbage hands. Not that that would discourage Kix at all, whose sabacc-face could swindle a fortune out of a pirate.

He didn’t tip Jesse off to this, though, content to watch Kix finally make a fool of him. Their prank war had only recently died down after Kix had painted the cogs of Jesse’s helmet a striking shade of pink. A truce had been made during their last mission, but Fives was hoping his favourite entertainment would be instigated again soon by some slight transgression or another.

The past few days had been a brutal, cold hell and he was determined to never go to an ice planet ever again. The feeling in his fingertips had only just returned and he was greatly anticipating the week-long rotation back to Coruscant that General Skywalker had promised. The _Resolute_ needed a week’s worth of repairs and Captain Rex had a new batch of shinies to train. Him and his _vod_ would be free for most of their time on Coruscant.

Despite his happiness though, it was beginning to feel like the war would never end. And even if it did, who was to stay what would happen to him and his brothers? He had mentioned as much to Nura the last time he saw her. The Senate was as much in the dark as to when the war actually end as its soldiers were, she admitted to him. Though there were always hopefuls like Senator Amidala, who thought the Seppies were one always one open dialogue away from surrendering. Fives knew that was a load of bantha fodder, but Nura would never say so to her friend.

He pushed those thoughts down, focusing instead on the card game in front of him.

“You lying son of a Hut! How do you always win?”

Jesse threw his cards down as Kix laughed, collecting his winnings.

“Oh, calm down and maybe I’ll buy you a round.” He jingled the credit chits in his hand and Jesse scoffed.

“Yeah, buy me a drink with my own kriffing credits.”

Fives laughed at his brother’s misfortune. Jesse had yet to learn to never cross Kix at the sabacc table and pride kept pushing him forward.

Jesse narrowed his eyes at Fives.

“Speaking of buying drinks, the last three times we’ve been to 79s you were nowhere to be seen!” He pointed an accusatory finger at him. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you found yourself a girl or something.”

Fives rolled his eyes, trying to play off his rising nerves. Echo was the only one who really knew about Nura, though Kix probably suspected something. The medic was a hard read even away from the sabacc table.

Fives leaned back on the chair, keeping himself balanced on its two back legs as he rolled his eyes. “Like you were sober enough to remember.”

“Oh, come on! At least tell us her name!” Jesse kicked Echo’s chair. “You gotta know what her name is.”

Echo laughed, then pretended at thinking deeply.

“I think it was Righty, or maybe it was Lefty?” He made a motion like he was cleaning his blaster, sending the table laughing.

Fives glared at his _vod_. “Yeah, laugh it up _di’kut_. At least I can get a girl.”

“Who’re you calling _di’kut?”_ Jesse shot his leg out before he could react, kicking his chair to knock him off balance. Fives went clattering to the floor as his brothers laughed.

Fives picked himself off the floor, righting his chair as he went. “I’m going to bed!”

Jesse made a face, “Don’t be so sensitive!”

Fives waved him off as he made to leave, finally feeling the wave of tiredness that only came after being awake for over twenty hours straight.

The rest of Torrent Company had gone to their barracks hours earlier and were all still solidly asleep as Fives silently made his way to his own bunk. Despite the bravado of his sabacc-playing brothers, he feared the day when they would be missing a player from their table. It had already happened once when him and Echo joined the 501st. He knew it was only luck that kept it from happening again.

That line of thinking inevitably lead to what would happen to Nura if it was him that was gone.

Would she miss him?

It almost made it easier to accept that future if he knew she wouldn’t, that she would find some other guy just as easily as she had found him. But he knew that wasn’t what would happen.

He thought about the way she laughed at his stupid jokes and told him he was too charming for his own good, and the way she listened to him tell stories about his brothers.

He knew she was just as lost in this as he was.

Although it wouldn’t help his current situation, Fives felt like the only way to ease his mind was stealing Jesse’s helmet, drawing a few crude-looking lothcats on it, and sliding it under Hardcase’s bunk before going to sleep.

*

Senator’s Revma’s anger and indignation lasted a week before any real progress was made in getting enough allies to have even a chance of voting down Deechi’s bill. Senators Organa, Mothma, and Amidala had been easy enough targets, though gaining their support had taken some concessions from the Senator who found that her past indifference now had real consequences.

For Nura it meant that her week dragged by in stacks of datapads, meetings, and forming new political alliances. It was these soul-sucking, bureaucratic processes of politics that made her want to do nothing more than curl up in bed and quit work forever.

But she was raised better than to give up when things got hard, which was why she had found herself slogging through policy holodocs with Riatt nearly every evening that week.

Nura looked at the chrono on her desk anxiously, aware that the _Resolute_ had docked over an hour ago. The night cycle of Coruscant had already begun, yet they were still hard at work and that cut into the already limited time she would get with Fives.

Beside her, Riatt groaned into her hands then rubbed her temples. “If I read one more line about the laws we inherited from the Old Republic, I _will_ go blind.”

“It could be worse; we could be reading about archaic military strategies in old Atollian.” Nura joked feebly, remembering the most hated class for every Atollian.

Riatt allowed herself a small laugh, the first Nura had heard not at the expense of her own wrongdoing. “Or soil composition studies. _Oipho_ , I was such a bad trainee. If I had known politics involved this much reading, I would have been a basket weaver on the Southern coast.”

Nura laughed, the day’s tension finally starting to leave her.

But it was difficult to forget what her delegation was facing. There was one week left until the Senate hearing and they were no closer to achieving their goals than they had been at the start. Senator Deechi’s appeals for ending the war quickly through brute strength tempted even the most democratic senators.

It was getting harder to fight what seemed like stark reality with principles and ideals alone.

Nura sighed as she looked at the frustratingly large pile of holodocs she still had to look over. As she pulled another one out of the pile, Riatt looked at her moment before asking a question.

“How did you get into politics anyway?”

The personal question was out of character for the woman who rarely said good morning to Nura, let alone ask her about her past.

“I was working in drafting safety legislation for the mining sector when the minister recommended me for the opening in Senator Revma’s office.”

“Well I knew that,” Riatt sighed and fiddled with her datapad. “I’m just trying to figure out the _why_ of it all. I spent five years working at the Atollian Ministry’s Refugee centre just to get a recommendation for an interview. An interview!” She scoffed at the memory. “Sion was an assistant to an assistant for the first half his political career before he even the chance to talk to the Senator. How did you end up on Coruscant with a position in the Senate with no experience?”

Despite the older woman’s tone, Nura had come to realise in the past week that she wasn’t trying to be rude. Riatt was a politician’s politician. She asked hard questions that needed answering, she had unquestioning morals, and she understood better than anyone that the charade of politics was an unfortunately vital part of the process of getting things done.

Nura wasn’t sure if she should be scared of her or be in awe of her.

“I…” Nura remembered being introduced to the Senator on Atolli Prime and having a short meeting with her. For a long time afterward, Nura guessed she got the job because she had said the right things in the right way at the right time – nothing more. Now, as she slogged through datapads and holodocs, she realised it was because that meeting revealed her complete lack of political drive. The Senator had wanted someone who would put their head down, work for hours into the night, and come in early in the morning. She didn’t need another potential political rival crowding her office. “I think I was the least-threatening option.”

“ _Sto thánato, exypiretó_.” Riatt sighed. “I never understood what it meant to be prepared to die for our people. I was a horrible cadet; never listened, always picked fights with my peers. It was the quartermaster that recommended politics.”

Riatt puffed her chest, imitating the man in a low voice. “The only place for you, girl, is somewhere that your selfishness can serve other people.”

And wasn’t that the most Atollian sentiment Nura had ever heard?

“I thought I came to Coruscant to serve our people,” Nura started. “But I feel like all I’ve done is make tea and vet holodocs for spelling errors.”

Riatt laughed. “I know you don’t realise it, but that’s more than most senators do.” She stood, stretching and groaning. “We’re not going to get anything more done tonight. Go home, rest up, and be ready to weather the storm tomorrow.”

*

Fives had his return to Coruscant down to an exact science.

He would tell Nura what his leave days were, join his brothers for a drink or two at 79s, then would give them the slip to meet Nura in her speeder. The sorry excuse for a speeder was the perfect place to stash his armour.

Nura had scoffed at his offers to help fix it up, though he wasn’t sure if it was her pride or her lack of faith in his mechanic skills that caused her refusal. Either way, it was the kind of speeder that could have been left unlocked with a ‘free’ sign and still wouldn’t have been taken by any sensible being.

Fives held the door handle in a white knuckled grip the entire way to Nura’s apartment, praying to every god in the galaxy that he didn’t survive the GAR just to die when the speeder eventually plummeted to the ground.

“Don’t be such a baby!” Nura chided him as they careened around another corner, barely keeping in their own lane. She gave him a wicked grin, as if he was meant to believe she had done it on purpose.

“I’m not!” He protested. “But on an unrelated note, how long ago did you get your pilot’s licence?”

The speeder made an unsettling humming noise and Nura flicked a few switches on the center console, pointedly ignoring his question in favour of bringing them down into her building’s parking garage.

He couldn’t help his sigh of relief at setting down safely and Nura tried to swat him on the arm.

“You can stay here if you’re going to be like that!”

Fives caught her arm before she could hit him, kissing her hand and winking. 

*

“And then what? You just got back on the ship and went back out into the galaxy?

Nura had drawn another story out of Fives as she threw together a meal for them. It was already later than she normally went to sleep, but they already had so little time together that Nura was willing to sacrifice a few hours of rest.

“Well… I guess so. It was just another mission, really.”

“Just another mission? Fives, the report to the senate said that Senator Chuchi stopped the Chairman from massacring the Talz!” Not for the first time, Nura was shocked by how much he undermined what him and his brothers accomplished.

But rather than revelling in any sense of heroism, Fives sat at her counter and complained about his frost-bitten fingers. He lifted his hand to show her the slight redness that made Nura roll her eyes.

“It sounds like you had a better go of it than I did. This new senate bill is killing me.”

Fives looked at her quizzically.

“Senator Deechi’s bill? I would have thought that it would be the talk of the military.” She dished out a plate and handed it to Fives, who shrugged in response.

“We don’t really get into the politics of the war, just deal with the aftermath.” He tucked into his plate like he hadn’t eaten in months. Nura laughed at that and shook her head before continuing.

“Some members of the senate want the Republic to take possession of resources they deem important to the war effort. Mines, factories, processing plants – all would be under military control!”

Fives’ eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Wouldn’t that be a good a thing?

“Fives, they want the Republic to hold half the industries in the galaxy! Put Republic soldiers in peaceful systems.”

He considered her point before speaking carefully. “But wouldn’t that be safer? I mean, your own planet couldn’t hold back the Separatists.”

Nura tried to push down her anger. She knew Fives was speaking from his own military experience. More than that, these were the same arguments she was struggling against herself.

“It’s about more than convenience or safety,” she repeated the arguments her and Riatt had already carefully wrote out for Senator Revma. “It’s about control. This would take control out of the hands of the people and gives it to the politicians. It takes away choice.”

Fives have her a half-smile. “But not everyone in this war has had a choice.”

He was only joking, she knew. But it tore at her conscious that she was arguing her own people’s autonomy in the Senate while the Republic protected itself with an army of clones who had no choice in the matter.

“It doesn’t really matter anyways,” Fives tried to reassure her. “Even if they put this bill through, it’s not like we have the men to enforce it.”

“What?”

“Half of our permanent bases are staffed by military contractors, not clones.” He scoffed. “The only people who’d benefit would be the Umbarans, and probably the Kaminoans.”

“Oh. _Oh_!” Nura ran to grab her datapad, stopping to kiss Fives on the cheek for causing her realisation. “You’re brilliant sometimes.”

Datapad in hand, she sat on her couch typing furiously.

“Sometimes?” She heard him ask behind her, but she was already too engrossed in her task to respond.

The wheels turned in her mind, weaving together what she knew of Deechi’s supporters and what she now suspected they would gain if his bill went through. The pattern became clear – those who supported the bill had ties to arms dealers, mercenary forces, even ration suppliers. All were people that would benefit from an expanded military operation.

That didn’t even touch her rising suspicion that corruption in very specific sectors of the Republic meant that centralising resource control would make taking cuts off the top even simpler. 

Nura knew she would have to spend the night drafting her ramblings into a coherent document.

She looked up from her datapad to where Fives sat beside her, apology already prepared for wasting their night. In the time it had taken her to search through documents and compile her lists, Fives had fallen asleep. He looked ridiculous, with his head lolled back and legs outstretched on her tiny couch. 

Quiet as she could, Nura stood up and grabbed the blanket from her bed. She carefully draped it over Fives, wondering to herself when the last time he had gotten a full night’s sleep was.

Getting this bill thrown out of the Senate would be a move towards ending the war, Nura knew. One first step to slowing down the military takeover of their once peaceful Republic. The thought fuelled her through the night, drawing out tenuous connections between senators into tangible strands of truth that would hold up on the Senate floor. She imagined this as the first of many little victories that would lead to an end to the war, or at least to de-escalation of the fighting. Looking up at Fives, the lines of worry on his face melting away on his sleeping face, she knew there could only be a future for them if the fighting stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading so far! Please leave a comment if you can! Next chapter may be a few days late because I'm going to be without internet for a week.


	7. Trust

CHAPTER 7 – TRUST

“This is good work.”

Nura had only just finished presenting what she had found to the Senator and the two other representatives. Her heart as raced as Senator Revma flipped through the pages of the holodoc, her pale blues eyes scanning through each line of text that Nura had meticulously researched and typed out the night before.

The statement was the closest the Senator had ever come to giving Nura a compliment.

Sion was less convinced. He had listened to Nura’s revelations with an unaffected ease and now seemed woefully underwhelmed by the scope of what she had found.

“I understand the connections between these senators are tangible enough to cause some concern, but how exactly can we use this to our advantage?” He shifted in his seat to address Senator Revma directly. “Half of the members of the Senate are involved in some petty corruption, money laundering or another political dalliance. How are we going to convince them to believe that this particular case is out of line? And also act on it?”

The room fell silent.

Nura felt a rush of heat creeping up her neck. She had thought gathering the information would be enough. But Sion was right, the Senate was an unfortunately corrupt body. Would bringing one conspiracy to light make them more enemies than allies?

“We don’t have to convince them of anything,” Riatt’s voice broke the silence. “All we have to do is convince Deechi that it will matter when this is plastered across every holonews feed in the galaxy.”

Sion gave her an indignant look.

“Like the common citizen will care about _another_ case of corruption in the Senate.” He waved his hand as if to brush the idea away. “It will just be another drop in the bucket.”

“Not if the Chancellor steps in.” The strength of her own voice surprised even Nura. “Senator Amidala has agreed to help us in any way possible. What if we use her connections to the Chancellor’s office to bring this to light? He would have to step in or risk looking the fool when millions of credits of resources go missing.”

Senator Revma considered their points. Deep in thought, her eyes were closed as she sat still at the sea before a storm. It was the pose of an Atollian elder, thinking of each possible outcome before making a final decision. The sight of her face, motionless and calm, made Nura miss her homeworld. The corruption that thrived on Coruscant had no place there.

“Though I agree that this conspiracy is not out of sync with the regular goings-on of the Senate,” Senator Revma said in a low voice. Her eyes remained closed as she softly spoke out her decision. “There is ample opportunity for us to make this into a scandal that the Chancellor must avoid should he wish to maintain his current base of power.”

Sion looked at his if he might protest but stopped himself. The Senator’s decision was final. Nura’s legs nearly gave out under her as the Senator redirected their efforts for the rest of the day, setting up a meeting with Senator Amidala and strengthening their case against Deechi. If all went as Senator Revma predicted, they would force Deechi into retracting his bill or gutting it to the point where it would hold no real threat to the goings-on of their own planet.

Nura set to work researching comparative cases from the Republic’s databanks, establishing the precedents for their new strategy. Time passed quickly as she flipped through pages and pages of holodocs, scanning through each for something useful.

“That was a clever use of those military updates.” Nura hadn’t heard Sion approach, but he stood now in front of her desk and offered her a cup of tea. “I hadn’t thought of using those to connect Deechi’s cronies together.”

Nura accepted the drink warily, unsure of the sincerity in the offering. “Thank you.” It felt like an incomplete answer. “A friend in the military inspired me to look into it.”

“Not one of the boys from that business on Atolli Prime, I hope.” Sion laughed; it had clearly meant to be a joke, but it stung at Nura’s pride.

Knowing better than to reply, Nura took a small sip of her tea. Sion carried on talking to her as if her lack of response was meant to egg him on.

“It’s a bold move from someone freshly off a promotion, I’ll admit, but I think you just might survive the rest of your time in the Senate.” He gestured to office’s window behind him and its grand view of the bustling city. “But now you’re a part of something much bigger than just pushing paper, now you’re in the thick of the political scrum.”

Nura contained her eye roll as Sion waxed on. He finally gave a her a slight incline of the head in goodbye, turning away to get back to his own work. As he walked away, collecting a new stack of holodocs from a passing droid, he turned to give her a final smile. “This is where the fun begins!”

*

“How are they looking?”

Fives scanned across the newest batch of shinies as they reassembled their blasters. He struggled to attach names to each identical face; he was exhausted from the day of leading training exercises. It was a task he and Echo had only begrudgingly taken at the insistence of Captain Rex. Beyond that, Fives knew that sacrificing part of their day to put shinies into line made them look like better candidates for ARC training.

Fives thought for a moment before replying. “They work well enough together but they need to be better integrated into the battalion as a whole – too task focused.”

Echo nodded in agreement. “They need to work on seeing a battle as a group effort.”

This particular batch of shinies reminded Fives of his own squad, hot-headed and full of impulsive decision-makers. He hadn’t realised how far he and Echo had come until the two were running the shinies through a training simulation. Had they really once been as impulsively careless as this group?

Captain Rex considered their remarks as he looked through his datapad. “Kamino’s been sending out shinies faster and faster every rotation.”

“We’ll have them up to 501st standards in no time, sir.” Echo supplied, his voice betraying his eagerness to impress their Captain.

“You two have done enough for today,” Captain Rex replied as he waved them off. “I’ll have General Skywalker give these training reports a final once-over, but you two are free to go.”

Fives and his brother saluted, then began walking to the barracks as the Captain called out “Just don’t cause any trouble this time!” as they left.

Once out of sight, Fives elbowed Echo in the ribs. “ _We’ll have them up to standards in no time, sir!_ ”

Echo shoved him back.

“At least I’m trying! Between your stupid prank war with Jesse and-” He gave a cursory look around, making sure the hallway was empty. “And your disappearing act with a member of the Senate! Do you not realise what would happen to you if you got caught?”

Echo’s resentment was written across his face. Fives tried to speak, but Echo cut off his response.

“We’re supposed to brothers! But you’re going to end up court martialled or worse when she gets decides she’s bored of you and tosses you out for the next _di’kut_ who thinks she’s something special.”

Fives felt anger wash over him, but he pushed it down for the sake of his brother. “Echo, come on! It’s she’s not going to do that!”

“How do you know that? You’re gone for months at a time! She could have a revolving door of-”

Echo didn’t get to finish his sentence. Fives grabbed him by the chest plate, pushing him against the wall.

“Don’t ever say that about her!”

It took every ounce of his self-control to not take a swing at his own brother. Echo shoved his hand away in disgust before stalking off.

Fives was stunned, both at his brother’s accusations and his own reactions. He debated going after Echo before brushing the idea aside.

He had to Nura, had to hear her voice and see her face before his brother’s accusations sat too long in his mind.

*

“So, your delegation has essentially decided to blackmail Senator Deechi into withdrawing his bill?”

Nura weighed her options before responding. “Well…essentially, yes we are.”

Fives laughed. “Glad my ideas could be of such use to the Republic.

Nura rolled her eyes as she settled into the couch next to Fives, leaning into his side as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He had arrived at her apartment in a whirlwind of anger, indignant over something he wasn’t willing to talk to her about.

He had pushed away her concern, defaulting back to smiles and jokes not long after. But she had known him for long enough now to see that he wasn’t really okay.

“You ready to talk about earlier yet?”

He hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“Do you ever think about what happens when the war ends?”

Nura reached up to touch his cheek, moving her hand down until her fingers were tangled into his beard. Fives leaned into her touch.

“I think about after all the time. About me and you and…” She trailed off, unsure of how to continue. On her planet, there was a standard trajectory for young people like them; marriage and babies and a hundred other things.

But those seemed so out of reach for them.

“It’s not that. What if one day I don’t come back?” Fives pulled her hand away from his face and held it between his own. “Or this war ends just like we want it to, but the Republic sells us back to Kamino? What is after the war is a worse place for us?”

Nura’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Where is all of this coming from?”

“It’s nothing, just…Echo said some stupid things.”

“You once told me Echo’s best friend was his reg manual. What could he have said that bothered you this much?”

“Nothing that matters to me – it’s just that he doesn’t trust you.” Fives sighed. “It’s hard for us to trust anyone that isn’t a _vod_ , really.”

Nura understood his brothers’ hesitance to trust anyone outside their ranks. She herself had barely spoken to a person outside of her own delegation in her first year on Coruscant. The bustle of the city and its love of egocentricity had terrified her in those early days – and sometimes still did.

She could hardly imagine what it must be like to place the lives of the only family you had ever known in the hands of those same politicians whose inadequacies had started the war in the first place.

“You trust me, don’t you?” She said it half-joking, acutely aware of every one of her own faults and failings.

But he gave her a goofy smile that made her own fears disappear. “Yeah, I trust you. But that’s just ‘cause I love you so much.”

She kissed the stupid grin off of his face.

“I love you too,” she whispered once they broke apart. “I know Echo is only trying to keep you safe. He may not trust me, but he’s doing the most important job in the entire galaxy for me whether he knows it or not.”

“He keeps me safe?” Fives teased her. “I’ve saved our skins more times than I can count.”

Nura laughed, leaning back into him as he launched into a story from one of his last missions. The strength in his voice as it rumbled through his chest was a needed comfort, a break from the stress of the Senate and the anxiety of the war. Her eyes slowly closed as Fives spoke. For a brief moment before she fell asleep, Nura allowed herself to imagine the two of them years from now, telling those same stories to dark-haired children on Atolli Prime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little bit late! Good excuse though - I had no internet and then broke my foot! Hopefully I'll have better luck the rest of the summer.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please leave kudos and a comment if you can!


	8. Interruptions

CHAPTER 8 – INTERRUPTIONS 

One week of shore leave was far more than Nura could ever hope for.

She knew that, repeated it to herself, felt it deep in her bones. But the chance to see Fives for days at a time did not make their last night together any easier or the prospect of saying goodbye for what could potentially be months any less distressing. With the _Resolute_ in prime condition and a new squadron of shinies assigned to the 501st, Nura and Fives were prepared for a long separation.

The stress of him being lightyears away, in the far corners of the galaxy fighting Force only knew what, made Nura tired and nearly sick with anxiety.

That whole week, between the rush of the political campaigning in her office and the slow countdown to Fives’ departure, had set Nura into an emotional spiral that threatened to consume her. She had mentioned as much to Padmé, though in less detail, when she had met the senior politician walking through the Senate offices. The two had walked together, Nura on her way to deliver datapads to Senator Organa and Padmé on her way to garner support for their cause from Senator Chuchi.

“I know what it’s like to have the people I love endangered by forces far outside of my control,” her mentor and friend had told her.

Then, she had given Nura sad smile and half-hug that made Nura feel like somehow everything might be okay. Padmé had a way of expressing empathy that left little wonder as to why she was so beloved by the Republic and its people. But behind her earnest face, Nura knew her friend was hiding her own fears; whether it was over politics, her family, or a man, Nura couldn’t tell.

“I’m so silly, I realise,” Nura wiped away a stray tear. “Half the galaxy is at war and I’m crying over myself in the safest building in the Republic.”

“It’s alright,” Padmé heartened her friend. “I think we’re all beside ourselves, these days.”

The pair had made their way through the Senate offices, trading tears and comfort as they walked. Nura had had no siblings growing up and her parents had been the very traditional sort of Atollian parents: removed and almost cold. But Padmé was the friend she wished she had had as a child.

By the time Nura made it to Senator Organa’s office, she was once again the solemn representative of her people that trailed behind Senator Revma. The rest of the day passed by in a similar cloud of resolve as Nura pushed back the emotions that threatened to sabotage her wellbeing.

When she returned to her apartment, Fives in tow, Nura was ready to implode. She was stressed and tired to the point of sickness; her entire body ached with fatigue.

“How about I make dinner?”

Fives murmured it against her forehead as she shuffled to the couch, nodding slowly as she laid down. She dozed off to the sound of him rustling through the cupboards and she smiled inwardly at the rustling of freeze-dried food packaging – truly the only meal he knew how to make in her small kitchen.

The heady smell of spicy Corellian noodles wafted over to her, bringing her back from the brink of sleep. On a normal day, she was indifferent to spicy food. But something about having a meal cooked for her by someone who was trying his very best made them smell better than any top Coruscanti restaurant.

But an inkling in her mind, a paranoia given to her during her first health class as a cadet, warned her otherwise.

The wheels started to turn in her head. She was tired and emotional and ravenous. Fatigue like this was sort of normal for her during stressful weeks, but one realisation hit her with the force of a cargo freighter crashing into purrgil.

“I’m late,” Nura bolted upright from the couch, her tiredness forgotten. A timeline raced through her mind as she counted on her fingers, heart rattling in her throat.

Fives looked at her from the kitchen, confusion crossing over his face before he responded.

“Do you- do you need to go somewhere?”

“What?” Nura struggled for words.

“It’s the middle of the night Nura, what could you possibly be late for?”

The depth of his misunderstanding left her breathless. She stood and hurried to the kitchen as she spoke, exasperated at the thick-skulled trooper.

“No, you idiot! My _monthly cycle_ is not on time.”

Fives looked at her like she had lost her mind.

“Baby, I’m trying but I am really not following what you’re trying to tell me.”

“Don’t you _baby_ me!” She stood beside him, reaching up to place her hands on either side of his face before speaking slowly. “I think I’m pregnant, you _kriffing -”_

“Oh. Oh!” Realisation dawned over his face.

Nura felt as if she had been thrown out to sea with the tide, her doubts rising over her head like a great wave. Had they not just shared their fears for the future? What could they expect now with the fighting separating them for months at a time, and what would happen later when the war finally ended? She felt like she might start to cry for the second time that day.

Fives just looked at her,

“Is that…is that a bad thing?”

“If you don’t take this seriously, I will murder you.” Nura felt tears sting her eyes as Fives smiled weakly at her, but she refused to let them fall.

“I’m sorry,” he placed his hands over hers. They were warm and solid against her own. “I am sorry. But what if this is a good thing?”

“Fives, we’re in the middle of a war.”

“Yesterday you told me that you thought about after the war all the time.” He drew her into his arms then, calming her erratic mind with his touch. “What if this is where we start?”

Nura considered the idea. How could she have a baby now? The thought made her heart flutter. Because really, she could already see their future and had been able to for so long now. A real home, far away from Coruscant and far away from conflict, with a family of their own.

But her dreams didn’t stop Fives’ own fears from the day before from flooding into her mind.

“What would I do if you didn’t come home?” She choked on the last word, tears cloying at her threat and finally spilling over onto her cheeks.

“One day there won’t be a war. We will have an after, I know it.” Fives wiped her tears away. His earnest nature was going to break her heart one day. He kissed her then, so softly it reminded her of their first in the starlight on Acheron.

She pulled away. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. I’m not even sure if I am pregnant.”

*

Not for the first time in the two weeks since the 501st was rotated out to the frontlines, Fives found himself staring at the bunk above him when he should have been sleeping.

His mind raced, not allowing his tired body the rest it desperately needed. The secret he and Nura kept weighed on his mind. He thought about it constantly, his hope drawing him in like a planet caught in a sun’s gravitational pull. Every night without fail, his thoughts wandered back to the holomessage Nura had sent him two days after they shipped out: a short recording of her talking over a blurry little image.

He pictured it in his mind.

“There’s not much to see yet,” Nura’s voice narrated over the little undulating waves that passed over the black holoimage with one little white spot. “It’s not much bigger than a _meiloorun_ seed. The meddroid estimated that I’m six weeks and 3 days along, which would mean the 36 hours you were on planet after Skywalker and Kenobi failed to capture Dooku was _very_ productive.”

The little dot was all Fives could think about. He had seen the growth vats him and his brothers came from many times before, but this was something else entirely. There was no cloning, or technology, or Kaminoans involved with this; just him and Nura to make a whole new person. The thought was so overwhelming that it terrified him. Briefly, he wondered if every organic thought this way before bringing a new life into the world.

His normal point of reference for the ordinary person was Nura, but communication with her had been limited by the lightyears of space between them. That short holovideo was the only message he had been able to receive.

His other point of reference, the brother with the near-encyclopaedic knowledge of planets, and people, and customs, had not said more than a few words to him in the entire two weeks they had been on the _Resolute_.

At some point Fives had hoped that Echo would give up, talk to him, and they could ignore the very real tension between the two of them for another day. But Echo was just as stubborn as any other clone, a trait that must have come from Jango Fett himself, and seemed resolved to not acknowledge Fives’ presence.

It had gotten to the point that even Jesse, the most dense brother he’d ever met, had asked him what he’d done to make Echo so mad.

Fives knew he could explain himself to Echo, but his brother simply wouldn’t give him the chance. This frustration kept Fives awake, helped set him on his feet at the morning klaxons, and had him glaring his brother down from the table during breakfast.

The mess hummed with the normal morning routine, cutlery clinking against plates and voices carrying over the room filling the room with the buzz of a Geonosian hive. Fives stewed into his caf and dry ration bar.

“That’s it!” Kix threw done his own ration bar, lip curling in disgust.

Jesse rolled his eyes. “Food’s not going to get any better just ‘cause you complain, _vod_.”

“No, I’ve had it with these two idiots!” He gestured toward Fives then Echo. “Two weeks of this! Either fight it out or knock it off!”

Echo had the decency to at least look embarrassed as the medic reeled into them. Fives, on the other hand, only glared back. It wasn’t his fault that Echo refused to be caught alone with him, let alone allow his brother to talk to him.

He was about to growl that out to Kix when he jumped up from his seat.

“You two, come with me if you ever want so much as bacta spray for a flimsy cut ever again.” Fives knew better than to argue with direct orders from the medic. He stood reluctantly, not acknowledging Echo who followed close behind him.

Kix led them through the _Resolute_ ’s busy corridors, grumbling under his breath the entire way as he led them towards the med bay. Kix had his helmet still clipped onto his belt and Fives did his best not to laugh as the crowd parted before the medic’s glare.

The trio passed a bewildered Commander Tano, who watched as Kix shuffled the brothers into an empty exam room.

“These two need to work out their issues before I throw both of them out of an airlock.” Fives heard him say to the Commander before turning back to them. “Work it out, or I will work it out for you.”

The door snapped shut, followed by the unmistakable _beep_ of the locking mechanism.

“I am not helping him the next time Jesse shaves his eyebrows off.”

The joke landed with a thud between them. Echo only glared in response so Fives tried again.

“I could probably slice the lock; it would be just like Kix to lock the door and leave.”

Silence again.

Saving his third try just in case they were locked in for a while, Fives let the silence hang in the air between him and his _vod_. The exam room was a couple metres across and just as many deep, enough for an exam table and enough that there was a wide berth between the two of them. Despite the distance, Fives still felt the press of his brother’s anger against him.

He had never known Echo to hold a grudge like this for more than a few days. Sure, there had been times in their younger days when he gave Hevy the silent treatment for stealing his datapad or volunteered their squad for outdoor night training after Droidbait locked him in his sleeping pod.

But for all of their arguing, him and Fives didn’t have fights like their other brothers. It was a cruel trick that the one time he desperately needed to talk to Echo, to share the best news of his life, that his brother could barely stand to be in the same room as him.

Fives put his bucket on the table, stretched his back until it popped, and settled into wait.

Echo broke first.

“I didn’t mean what I said about Nura,” Fives’ head shot up. Echo had taken off his own bucket and was focused on passing it between his hands as he spoke. “I didn’t mean what I said about her, but I did mean the other stuff. You’re gonna get court-martialled _vod_! Where will that leave her? Where will that leave-”

Echo cut himself off, taking a deep breath and letting it out noisily before continuing.

“Where will that leave me?”

“Echo, I…” He swallowed hard, then tried again. “Echo, you’ll always be my brother. But Nura is something special. She’s – well, we’re having a baby, _vod_.”

Fives barely had time to duck before Echo sent his bucket sailing, hitting the door where his head had been only half a second earlier.

“You’re such a _kriffing idiot_! Did you forget there’s a war going on? Or are you going to take her and desert to some outer rim planet since you’re already breaking every _single_ regulation we have?”

“Echo-”

“I can’t believe you, Fives. We made an oath to the Republic, to our _brothers_ , to put this fight before everything. But you’re living in a fantasy world-”

“Shut up and let me speak!” Fives crossed the room in two steps, grabbing his brother’s chestplate to make him look him in the eye. “I am not a deserter. I know what I have to do: win this war on the battlefield while Nura tries to end it in the Senate.”

Fives let him go, then touched the blue handprint on Echo’s armour. “I’m still your brother, _di’kut_. No matter how you feel about it, I’ll always be your older, stronger, and much better-looking brother.”

Echo rolled his eyes, then laughed. It was as good of a truce as any for Fives.

“I can’t believe your _shabla_ genes are getting passed on,” Echo scoffed as he pushed past Fives to retrieve his bucket. He held it up to the light. “Not a single scratch on it.”

“I’m not sure if that says more about your throwing arm or the integrity of our armour.” Fives countered as he turned around to pound his fist against the door. “Kix!”

No response.

“Kix, open the door or I swear your _shebs_ are-”

The door hissed open. Fives looked around, confused as he saw no one before he looked down at Commander Tano. He snapped to attention on instinct, hearing Echo do the same behind him.

“At ease boys,” she said as she crunched on a pack of ration snacks. “Kix said he had better things to do than babysit you guys.”

“And you didn’t?” One day, Fives knew his mouth was going to get him into trouble. But the commander only laughed and shrugged.

“Wanted to know what you were fighting about. Sounded pretty epic from out here. Ration cube?”

Echo responded this time. “All due respect commander, we don’t accept bribes.” 

She sighed, a dejected sound that would have fit better in a holodrama than on a star destroyer. “Fine, keep your secrets. I’ll stay my lonely, friendless self.”

Fives shook his head at her before plunking his bucket back on his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, commander.”

“Jesse said you were fighting over a girl.”

“Jesse also said he graduated top of his squad. Sometimes he lies for attention.”

Commander Tano laughed again, giving up on her prodding for gossip.

“Debrief is in ten. You two better get a move on if you don’t want to hear from Captain Rex.” There was an unsaid _again_ that hung onto the end of her sentence.

Knowing better than to argue, Fives saluted her before Echo and him made their way through the corridor. Over the comms, he gave his brother one last reassurance.

“Everything’s going to work out fine, Echo. You’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was Kix about to put Echo and Fives in a 'get-along shirt?' Yes.  
> Does Ahsoka Tano like to be in the know with clone gossip? Of course. She's 14 and I honestly don't think there's very much else to entertain oneself with on a star destroyer. 
> 
> I'm really proud of how this chapter turned out and thanks so much to the people who've commented so far <3 it makes my day to know that people like my story!


	9. Beginnings

CHAPTER 9 – BEGINNINGS

“Nura, I need those documents revised and on my desk by tomorrow morning.” Senator Revma moved through the office, checking on the status of work from her three staffers. “The Chancellor has called for an emergency meeting of the Senate after that debacle on Naboo and I’ve pulled Riatt to help Sion with speechwriting.”

Nura had to stop herself from groaning out loud. It had been over three months since Deechi’s bill had been voted down in the Senate in its final stages and Senator Revma was not about to be caught unawares again. While that was good for her career in the Senate, it meant her staff was on the brink of exhaustion.

To make matters worse, the recent chemical attack on Naboo, an act that had nearly cost the lives of Senator Amidala, a Jedi padawan, and part of a battalion, had rattled even the most apathetic senators.

Senator Revma was in support of Senator Organa’s proposal, a wartime treaty with the Separatists to outlaw such kinds of weapons that could wreak untold destruction on civilian populations.

But they feared the Chancellor was instead only going to escalate the war in an attempt to end it sooner.

Nura shifted in her chair, a wave of discomfort washing over her. She put a hand on the little bump that had only recently appeared, trying to calm the fluttering inside. It felt like a school of fish flipping and twirling inside of her.

Not for the first time, she wished Fives was there to experience it all with her. But that 501st had only rotated back to Coruscant once in the past three months, only staying long enough on planet to resupply then leave almost as soon as they had arrived. She hadn’t even had the chance to see Fives face-to-face, only through the static of a commlink during her lunch break that day. Now, the 501st had been on Coruscant for over three days but was quarantined until all troopers were tested clear of the virus. She hadn’t been able to get through to him on the comms either.

Nura sighed out loud, feeling tired and lonely and pregnant.

“Credit for your thoughts?”

Nura startled, realising Riatt had snuck up on her the moment that the Senator left the office.

“Just exhausted,” she tried to smile, but it felt empty.

Riatt seemed not to notice, stretching dramatically.

“That’s why my wife had the babies,” she offered her hand to help Nura stand up. “Come on, mama. Let’s get lunch.”

*

The Alderaanian lunch special tasted even better than it had looked on the menu. Once Nura would have been embarrassed to scarf down her lunch in front Riatt, whose position in the Senator’s office was far above her own. But now, those anxieties had melted away in the aftermath of the Deechi incident.

Nura welcomed the new friendship.

“Have you and mystery man decided on a wedding date, yet?”

Nura rolled her eyes. Riatt, whose two children had recently gone back to Atolli Prime for their cadet training, had been occupying her now-free time with meddling in Nura’s love life. Her focus alternated between meeting Nura’s ‘mysterious’ partner and organising a wedding that far exceeded what Nura would ever want.

“We haven’t even seen each other in weeks, let alone had the opportunity to talk about getting married.”

But saying that only made Riatt double-down on her insistence.

“If it wasn’t for that old market bat, Galena, talking my ear off about _Nura’s young man_ I would think he didn’t exist.”

“He exists alright,” Nura said, rubbing her little belly pointedly. “He’s just in a line of work that requires him to be off-planet more than he’s on.”

Before Riatt could respond further, Nura waved down Padmé as she entered the cafeteria.

Padmé, only recently released from the Republic’s Medical centre, was set to testify to the Senate the following day. Behind the splendid robes and ornate hair, Nura could see the tiredness that dogged her friend.

She should have taken a week off, Nura thought. But the Senate waits for no one.

“Senator Amidala,” Riatt greeted her with a politician’s grace. “Senator Revma sent her well-wishes to your office when she heard what happened. Our delegation is giving our full support to Senator Organa’s wartime treaty on your behalf.”

Padmé sat slowly, nodding in thanks.

“Yes, I’m hoping my testimony tomorrow will sway other systems to sign the treaty rather than increase troop presence in the Outer Rim. But let’s leave politics for the Senate floor.” She turned to Nura, smiling softly. “How have you been doing?”

Nura shrugged. “Sometimes tired, sometimes hungry, and sometimes tired and hungry at the same time.”

Padmé laughed, some of the tension leaving her face.

“We were just talking about Nura’s wedding plans,” Riatt circled the conversation back as Nura cringed inwardly to herself.

“We don’t have any _plans_ ,” she tried to give Riatt a harsh stare, but the other woman ignored her. “Not until the end of the war, at least.”

“Oh,” Padmé’s eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t realise you weren’t married already.”

Her reaction reminded Nura of the wide gaps between their cultures that she sometimes forgot were there.

“For Atollians, marriage is for couples with children,” Riatt supplied. “My wife and I weren’t married until our second son was born.”

“Excatly!” Nura sighed in frustration. “Which is why I don’t know why you’re rushing me to the commitment rings!”

“Because we are far overdue for a celebration!” Riatt countered. Then to Padmé she said, “There’s really nothing like an Atollian wedding.”

Nura ignored Riatt as she rattled onto to the other woman about their people’s traditions, focusing instead on finishing her lunch.

Padmé’s return from medical isolation meant that the 501st would soon be free to leave their ship. Nura was anxious and excited to see Fives again, to share what she knew so far about their baby and to have him beside her, even if it would only be for a few hours.

*

Fives yawned into his caf.

72 hours of isolation aboard the _Resolute_ following the virus debacle on Naboo had been the most boring thing he’d had to endure since sentry duty on Rishi. And being so close to Nura and yet so far from her had been another struggle entirely.

One last checkup, though, and he would be free to take his long-awaited shore leave.

“Did you hear about Sticks from the 224th?”

Hardcase dropped his tray loudly onto the table, jostling Fives as he crashed into the seat beside him. Fives swore as his caf sloshed in its cup, little droplets burning his bare hand.

“What possible exciting thing could that Mud Jumper have done?” Jesse asked around a mouthful of protein cubes.

Hardcase motioned for the assembled group to come closer, as if he was about to reveal the secrets of the galaxy.

“Just tell us, _di’kut_ ,” Fives grumbled, hand stinging.

Ignoring him, Hardcase waited for them to fold in around him before finally letting it out.

“They caught him _deserting_ with some Twi freedom fighter.” Shock passed around the group as Hardcase continued. “They had a whole ship loaded to go and everything!”

“Who’d you hear that from?” Jesse was less than convinced by Hardcase’s gossip than Fives. Fives knew Hardcase had an almost Jedi-like ability to identify (and spread) rumours around their battalion. It’s why he tried to stay on his side.

“Waxer heard it from Sinker cause he’s batchmates with the 224th's new captain and he told Boil who told Commander Cody who I overheard mention it just now to Captain Rex while I was on patrol during their debrief.”

Echo sighed. “Hardcase, you need to stop listening in on the Captain’s conversations before you get court-martialled or worse.”

Hardcase brushed off his concern, “That’s not even the craziest part! The Mud Jumpers had been stationed at the same outpost for a while, right? Apparently Sticks had been _cleaning blasters_ with her the whole time and she has a kid on the way to prove it.”

“Now I know you’re telling stories,” Jesse turned around, spotted Kix with the other medics and called him over. Hardcase repeated his gossip to the medic who wanted to be anywhere but there.

“Please explain to Hardcase why he’s a liar.”

Kix looked like he was debating between eating his own blaster and walking out of an open airlock.

“It’s not exactly _impossible_ …”

Jesse’s face eyebrows knitted together in confusion as Hardcase already began to celebrate his victory. “But aren’t we all…shooting blanks?”

“We’re not,” Kix sighs. “The cloning process can break down the ability to, ah… _produce_ viable genetic material, but it doesn’t prevent it altogether.”

He paused, looked at Jesse directly, and continued. “It also won’t stop you from coming to the medbay with your crotch on fire, _again_ , so take some karking safety measures.”

The table erupted into laughter at their brother’s expense.

Hardcase clapped a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “It’s alright _, vod_. You can make it up to me by buying the first round tonight.”

As the laughter died off, Echo piped up, asking the question that had also been at the forefront of Fives’ mind.

“What are they going to do to Sticks?”

“Court-martial, I think. Then probably reconditioning on Kamino.”

Fives swallows the dryness in his mouth, discomfort settling onto his shoulders as the seconds dragged on. He asks the question that brings true terror into his mind.

“What’s gonna happen to the Twi and their kid?”

Hardcase shrugs, attention already turned to Jesse and Kix’s conversation about the upcoming limmie tournament between them and the 212th.

“Didn’t hear anything, but she’s a citizen so they’ll be fine, I guess.”

Fives wasn’t so convinced.

*

“I don’t exactly have the authority to look into military records like that,” Nura passed a steaming mug of tea into Fives’ hands before settling into the couch beside him. “Especially when it concerns disciplinary actions.”

“Yeah, I figured it would be something like that.” He pressed a hand against her belly, and she felt a little swirl of movement in response. “I was just curious, you know?”

Nura sighed, putting her hand over his. “I can try to find out, but are you sure he wasn’t making things up? I thought you said your brothers sometime lie for attention.”

Fives laughed, shaking his head. “No, no, that’s just Jesse. Hardcase is the one who set a droid popper off on himself when he was bored – he doesn’t need to lie to get attention.”

“Still,” Nura said as she moved his hand to a new spot. It was too early for him to feel anything, but it hadn’t stopped him from trying all night. “It makes me curious what the army can even do in these situations – the GAR’s rules against fraternization don’t cover it nor are there any provisions about it in the Wartime Measure Act.”

“I guess the Republic never thought their army was anything more than warm-blooded droids.” He set down his tea to flex his free arm, grinning at her. “I guess they didn’t realise they were buying warm-blooded men.”

He meant it as a joke, but Nura feels guilty all the same. She pushed the feeling away as she tried to change the subject to something more lighthearted.

“It’s weird to think that, technically, that baby and ours will be half-siblings.”

Fives made a face.

“Speaking of siblings,” Nura elbowed him in the ribs. “You were supposed to bring Echo to dinner.”

“He didn’t want to come!” He manoeuvred out of her reach. “We just spent days in quarantine after a months-long tour. He said he’d rather scrub the barracks than see my face for the next 24 hours.”

Nura narrowed her eyes at him.

“I promise I will bring him home tomorrow night, even if it’s in a bag!” Fives’ hands are lifted in surrender.

She catches one of his hands in her own, bringing it down as she settles back down beside him. Fives keeps talking, telling her all about the exploits of the 501st during their long time away.

A feeling of peace settled over her, calming her fears for the first time in weeks. But a thought lingered in the back of her mind: what happened to that freedom fighter? And more importantly, she realised, why hadn’t the Senate’s security council heard anything about it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one today, part one of a little arc I have planned :)
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and leave a comment if you can!


	10. Middle

CHAPTER 10 – MIDDLE

* * *

“That doesn’t look like Separatist trading sanctions.”

Nura jumped at Sion’s voice, unsure of how to explain her use of the Senator’s personal clearance codes to sort through confidential military files.

She had been using the Senator’s datapad to study how new Republic trade injunctions would affect their agreements with the Mining Guild when she had the idea to investigate Fives’ rumour. Atolli Prime was a member of the Senate’s security council, which gave Senator Revma relatively unfettered access to many of the confidential records of the GAR.

Ten minutes ago, it has seemed like an innocent use of resources. Now, Nura stumbled over her words.

“I was just…curious about a rumour I’d heard about Castor IV.”

“Castor IV?” He took the datapad out of her hands, examining the report before she could protest. “What kind of rumour was this?”

The best lies contained part of the truth, Nura knew. And she could not be caught in a lie.

“A possible sentient rights violation. A Twi’lek fighter under the command of the Castorian provisional government found herself in a _complicated_ situation after having a relationship with one of our GAR boys.” She emphasis the word hoping Sion would understand her meaning, then motioned for he to look at the datapad. “There is a record of one private being court-martialled after the 224th pulled out of the region. He was sent to Kamino for reconditioning, but the paperwork is lacking the final charge. After he was sent to Kamino, it’s like he disappeared.”

“Let me guess,” Sion considered the datapad for a moment. “There’s no record of the Twi’lek who started the whole mess either?”

Nura nodded slowly, relieved his attention was on the story and not on her interest in it.

“I’m starting to think this rumour was just that – a rumour started by some trooper with nothing else to do but make up stories.”

“Still,” Sion continued; his face betrayed his own confusion into the document. “It’s unusual for a verdict not to be recorded, especially when the trooper is sentenced to reconditioning.”

“A clerical error?” She suggested but he shook his head.

“This kind of sentence goes through a battalion’s commanders, the Jedi, and the military court system before it’s sent to Kamino. It should be impossible for an omission like this to happen.”

Sion was hitting the same wall that Nura had moments before. Without a corroborating charge, it would be impossible to know where the trooper ended up or who was involved in the original incident that lead to the court martial. The GAR kept what records they could, but planetary militias were another beast altogether. Finding one Twi’lek in a galaxy at war, even a pregnant one, would be impossible without records that didn’t exist.

“I’m going to look into this trooper,” Sion handed the datapad back to her. Nura tried to take it, but Sion held onto it for a moment before releasing it to. “Next time, be more careful when you’re snooping through confidential files.”

“I wasn’t _snooping_ ,” she tried to protest, but Sion had already turned away.

Nura went back to her desk and sank into her chair, her mind churning between anxiety and relief. Sion knew she wasn’t a spy, that much she was certain from his offer of help, but she feared what would happen if he thought too much about why she was concerned with army rumours.

“What was Sion questioning you about this time?” Riatt poked her head out of the office’s kitchenette, steaming cup of tea in hand.

“Nothing,” Nura replied quickly. “Nothing he hasn’t said before about the quality of my reports or the omissions in my notes or-”

“Or the way you two just can’t seem to get along.” Riatt finished for her, taking a sip of her tea. She balanced a fine line in their office now, of being everyone’s friend and no one’s enemy.

“ _I_ get along just fine,” Nura defended herself. “ _He’s_ the one who doesn’t like my work.”

Riatt laughed, shaking her head as she went back to her own desk, leaving Nura alone once again. She tried to focus on the task in front of her, sorting through trade injunctions, but each word she read slipped out of her mind the moment her eyes moved onto the next.

Her focus was still on the Twi’Lek.

It had been almost a full month since Fives first told her the story and she was no closer to finding the truth behind it. Every avenue she took led to the same, empty answers: the trooper was reconditioned, with no record of why, where he ended up, or even if a civilian infraction was involved.

On top of all of that, Nura felt a distinct kinship with this woman she wasn’t even positive was real.

She wondered what the woman looked like and if she had been in love. Nura thought up a hundred different scenarios as she rubbed her own growing belly. Was she sitting somewhere like this? Was she somewhere out in the galaxy thinking about her own little one? And the trooper, was he reconditioned or something worse?

Nura sighed. As much as she had resented Sion’s perfectionism in the past, he might be the new set of eyes she needed. Perhaps his distance from the issue could shed some much-needed light on the inconsistencies she found.

With new resolve, Nura set to finish her real work. Only time would tell what the answer she was looking for would be.

*

“This is treason, Fives.”

“Just shut up and keep watch, Echo.” Fives hissed as he strained to set the last wire into place. “Kix isn’t going to know what hit him.”

He ignored Echo’s sigh, focusing instead on getting the bucket of water poised perfectly above the door to the medic’s office. Once satisfied, he jumped down from the chair he was standing on.

“Kix isn’t going to know what hit him.” Fives put the chair back, then signalled for Echo to follow him out. “We have about two minutes until Kix gets back from the mess.”

As much as Fives liked having Echo back on his side, he couldn’t let Kix locking them in an exam room go unanswered. Public embarrassment aside, he had a reputation to uphold – which was why he was now about to betray his long-time ally in the 501st’s most prolific prank war to date.

He led Echo around the corner from the medbay, where they could wait in relative safety.

“I have a bad feeling about this, _vod_.”

Fives rolled his eyes. “Kix’ll never know it was us! He’s just gonna blame Hardcase or Jesse like he always does, and we’ll get to enjoy everything from afar.”

Echo didn’t look satisfied with that answer but didn’t say anything as the two continued to wait.

They didn’t have to stand around for very long, just as Fives had planned out. He heard the medbay door _woosh_ open, then the door to Kix’s office and the yell of a clone who’d just been doused in ice water.

“We should-” Fives couldn’t contain his laughter and tried to gasp out between laughs. “We should get away before he comes looking for Jesse.”

“That didn’t sound like Kix…” Echo paused for a moment. “We should probably run.”

They turned to leave but were stopped dead in their tracks by the crackling of the comms in their helmets.

“Jesse, Hardcase, Fives, Echo.” Captain Rex’s voice was so low it was almost a whisper. Fives felt the floor drop out from under him. “Get to the _kriffing_ medbay before I skin you all alive.”

*

In retrospect, even Fives could admit that mistakes were made in his execution and planning. He should’ve gotten one of the junior medics on his side to triple-check Kix’s schedule for the day, should’ve had someone to redirect any non-medic entries into the office. Those failures in planning are what he blamed for the current situation. Failures that would never again be repeated.

“Toothbrushes to clean the cargo hold?” Fives turned to see Commander Tano peeking her head around the corner. “I didn’t think Captain Rex could even get that mad.”

“Is that why you’re sneaking around down here?” Fives asked as his brothers in punishment sent a chorus of greetings to their commander.

She waved to them, then shook her head. “Just came to relay that we’re going to be touching down on Coruscant in two hours – you might want to speed up cleaning if you have any hopes of getting shore leave.”

“Might be done faster if we have a Jedi helping us.”

“Sorry, but no can do,” Commander Tano laughed. “Captain Rex put out a moratorium on sympathy for you guys.”

Fives let out a dramatic sigh as he went back to cleaning. Commander Tano was still hovering around the cargo hold, finally climbing up one of the stacks of supplies to sit.

“You okay, commander?” He asked as she settled in.

She shrugged in response.

Sometimes, Fives could forget that their commander was so young. When she was on the battlefield, she was just another Jedi plowing through ranks of clankers. But sometimes, like right then, he remembered how much of a kid she still was.

The mission over Ryloth hadn’t gone as well as the generals had hoped. Fives knew the names of the pilots that were lost, but he hadn’t been in the air with them like Commander Tano had been. He’d lost brothers before, but the commander was taking this loss especially hard.

He tried to push down his own fears – that this war wouldn’t end, that his own kid would be handed a blaster at 14, that they would have to experience the same gut-wrenching losses that he had. Commander Tano didn’t need his worries, she needed his empathy.

“You know, commander,” he started as he scrubbed at particularly scored part of the deck. “After Echo and I lost our batchmates on Rishi, I spent a long time picking apart what we did wrong. I knew every mistake we made and what we should have done instead. Kriff – I could probably recite the whole thing in my sleep.

“But obsessing over what I did wrong didn’t bring my brothers back and it definitely didn’t make me feel any better. I know you Jedi must have your ways of dealing with losses and grief, but if you ever need to just talk it out – all of us clones are here for you.”

Commander Tano was quiet for a long time. Fives kept on cleaning. He was very much aware that Captain Rex would pour over every inch, just looking for an excuse to keep them locked down on-base while the rest of the 501st rotated through their shore leave.

“How-,” he looked up as her voice broke through the sound of cleaning. “Does it get any easier?”

He shook his head.

“It never gets easier. And I don’t think I would want it to, either. I still miss my _vod_ , but I try to remember the good things, you know? How we got our names, the stupid stuff we would do that got us into trouble – the things that matter more than how they died.”

“Thanks, Fives.” She gave him a sad smile that was far too old for her young face.

“Anytime, commander.”

*

“Do you want the rest of my dessert?”

“Yes, please.”

Nura’s heart felt a hundred times lighter than it had in a long while. She had been bogged down in her work and in the research that Sion passed along to her for over two weeks. Every day felt like there was another revelation into the missing woman, which had recently turned out to be missing _women_. The breadth of what they had found brought a cold fear to Nura’s heart, but she was resolved against telling Fives exactly what she had found until she had more information. He didn’t need to be worrying about her while he was fighting a war.

The 501st was itself returning after heavy losses over Ryloth, spending time now recouping its men. She had seen the effect it had on Fives the moment he walked through the door, Echo in tow.

She pushed those thoughts aside, happy at last at having Five’s closest brother over. Nura was well aware that Echo wasn’t sure about her or her place in Fives’ future; she wanted to prove she wouldn’t hurt his brother.

Nura smiled at Fives as he handed her his plate, grabbing his hand and putting it on the spot where their little one was kicking.

“I think he’s playing limmie in there,” Fives smiled back and kissed her cheek. “Feels like a Galaxy Cup-winning kick, alright.”

Echo snorted. “If the kid’s anything like Fives, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

Fives stood, crossing Nura’s little apartment to play-fight his brother.

Nura laughed at the two men’s antics. “Or maybe she’ll be a career prankster like her father.”

It was Echo’s turn to laugh as Fives played at being offended.

“I’ll have you know that we do other things besides pulling pranks on each other.” Fives said as he dodged his brother’s counterattack.

“Like getting everyone else in trouble?” Fives grimaced at the memory and Echo used the momentary distraction to pull Five’s into a headlock.

“Watch my furniture!” Nura warned, half-serious as the two brothers wrestled.

Before either man could respond, the rapid beeping of the troopers’ wrist comms filled the air.

“What-?” Fives started to say just as Echo swore and released his grip to check his own comm.

“We’re being called back to the base.”

“Now?” Nura felt a rush of anger. “But you only just got here!”

“I’m sorry,” Fives ducked down to kiss her. “I’m sure we’ll be back in no time, it’s probably just some kind of drill.”

She felt worse than helpless as Fives grabbed her speeder keys, calling out that he’d park it in her usual spot before disappearing out the door with his brother.

Later, Nura would learn about the intruder in the Temple through the Senate channels. But that news didn’t reach her until well into the night, after she spent half the night awake and waiting for Fives’ return. In that moment, there was only fear and confusion as she looked at the now-empty table and dirty dishes.

*

The anxiety from the aftermath of her ill-fated reunion with Fives had sat on Nura’s mind until it was overcome by a new, sinister fear brought on by Sion’s newest revelation. There were four reports he could find of troopers being reconditioned without proper documentation, each with its own accompanying tale of a missing woman. It was enough for her to acknowledge the need for more help.

Nura took a deep breath to try to calm her rising nerves before she knocked on Senator Revma’s office door.

“Senator?” Nura half-hoped that she would be sent away before she could speak. “I need a moment to speak to you…in confidence.”

Senator Revma waved her in, the door sliding shut behind her. Nura’s hands felt sweaty and slippery on her datapad.

“Well?”

“I – well, Sion and I, we were looking through some military files after we noticed a disturbing trend of clone troopers being sent for reconditioning on Kamino without proper documentation that corresponded with reports of civilian women disappearing.”

She handed the datapad over, weeks of work now resting in the hands of someone who could either help or shoot down her rising fear.

“The first was a civilian medic after the battle of Geonosis. Her family put out a bounty out for her safe return and her mother claimed that she was having an affair with a deckhand. Then there’s the case of Senator Mon Tith’s missing daughter – he claims she was involved with one of the Coruscant Guard, but the trooper was sent for reconditioning the day she went missing. The third and fourth were militia members from Christophsis and Castor IV, respectively.”

“All four missing?”

Nura nodded.

“All four missing, all four suspected to have been pregnant by clone troopers who were immediately reconditioned without proper reason.” She swallowed back rising tears. “Two women might be a coincidence, three might be bad luck, but four? It’s starting to look like a pattern.”

Senator Revma shook her head.

“It doesn’t look like a pattern; it _is_ a pattern.” She rubbed a hand over her face; it was the first time Nura had seen her look anything less than put-together. “The Republic released an army of a million men on the galaxy and didn’t expect a single thing to come of it.”

“I’m going to follow up what you’ve brought me. But I need to know – your interest in this is personal, isn’t it?”

Nura went numb. She could only stare blankly until she finally nodded, admitting at last to someone who the father of her child was.

“I’m afraid-” Nura swallowed, unsure of how to begin. “I’m afraid something might happen to me, next.”


	11. End (Part 1)

CHAPTER 11 – END PART 1

* * *

“ _Kriff_ – incoming!”

Fives swore as another volley of Separatist rounds streaked overhead. He ducked behind an outcropping in the rocky ground, pulling Echo with him. They hit the ground hard, heads bouncing as they dove for cover. Seconds later, the round hit just a few feet away from where they had been standing, sending the red dirt of Malastere shooting up towards the sky.

“Thanks, _vod_ ,” Echo pulled off his bucket to fiddle with his HUD. He pushed at the sensors before swearing. “That last blast must’ve shorted it out.”

Fives peeked out around their hiding spot as blaster bolts flew past in both directions. The view from his HUD was staticky but seemed otherwise fine. It looked like for every shot his brothers sent towards the clankers, three were sent back towards them. Him and Echo were at the front of the Republic’s line, barely holding on as the Separatists pressed their offensive.

Fives narrowed his gaze to the droid on the repeater cannon, cutting through Dugs and Republic forces with ease.

“If we take out the clanker at 10 o’clock, we can push the line farther.” He said as he pulled back from his vantage point.

“Cover me so I can get a better look,” Fives nodded to Echo as he pulled his bucket back on. “On my count, one, two, three!”

Fives sprung up at his brother’s word, firing rounds into the droid army as they crept closer. Echo assessed the battle in front of them and pulled Fives back down with him.

“We would need more than a few detonators and more cover than we can get,” Echo said as he shook his head. 

“C’mon, _vod_. You’re more creative than that.” Fives rolled his eyes inside his bucket, though his brother couldn’t see, and nudged him to look to their right where Hardcase was pinned down. “It’ll be just like training on Kamino.”

Echo grunted out a “Fine,” then pulled out his last detonator. “How are we playing this?”

“Hardcase’ll draw fire to him while we flank to that downed transport, cut into the sides with some detonators, and home in time for rations.”

Echo considered the plan for a moment before sighing. He rapped his knuckles on the side of his helmet. “Alright, but remember I’m flying blind here. Get Hardcase on the comms and let the Captain know we’re moving on the offensive.”

*

“You ready Hardcase?” Fives asked over the comms, his voice calmer than it should have been.

“I was pulled from my growth tank ready!” Fives couldn’t see Hardcase from his perch, but he could hear the sadistic smile in his voice. No matter the odds, that _vod_ was always ready for a fight.

Fives felt Echo shift behind him, sensed his discomfort at the lack of communication coming from his HUD. He raised a fist, ready to signal his brother to move once Hardcase started his one-man attack.

“On my mark…go!”

They set off at a sprint, heads down as they thundered across the uneven ground towards their cover. Fives could hear the repeating blasts and triumphant yells that signalled Hardcase’s continued success in drawing fire away from them. He only hoped he could last until they took out the cannon.

He slid feet-first into their cover and heard Echo do the same behind him.

“Arm detonators!” He tossed one to Echo, keeping one for himself. This is where the dangerous part of this plan kicked in; throw too soon and the droids might get out of the way, too late and they’d be shredded by their own blast. He counted down the seconds. “Now!”

As much as he would have liked to watch the detonators arc through the air and destroy the seppie guns, he ducked down and waited for the blasts to signal them to move forward and clear the remaining clankers. Now was not the time for vanity or revenge, now was the time for focus.

“Let’s move!” Echo yelled as the blasts silenced the enemy’s guns. Over the comms, Fives heard Hardcase call the same thing out to his squad.

He held his blaster tightly, sweeping through the wreckage of the blaster cannon and the remains of a dozen droids. His comms crackled in his ears.

“Fiv- move!” Captain Rex’s voice cut in and out.

“Captain, we’ve cleared the Seppies – are we pushing forward or holding ground for reinforcement?”

“Move – incoming!”

His HUD lit up in red, proximity sensors cutting in and out. But the screaming of a shell overhead was warning enough.

“Run!” Fives grabbed Echo by the chest plate, pulling him back towards the wrecked transport. The two took off at a full tilt, trying with all they had left to outrun the oncoming explosive.

 _Just a few more steps_ , he thought as his legs burned in protest under. The distance shrank and shrank, and Echo’s hand pushed him forward.

Fives heard the shell hit the ground behind them and he dove forward, feeling his elbows and knees take the brunt of his landing. Then, he felt nothing at all.

*

“And our position for the vote on trade levies next week?”

Senator Revma parsed through a stack of flimsy, throwing out the question to her team without sparing a glance to any of them.

“Against it, senator.” Riatt passed her a new piece of flimsy which she accepted with the barest of thanks. “It would place too high of a strain on industries that are already suffering due to the war.”

The conversation continued in stop and starts as the three senior politicians ran through some policy or another – Nura’s fingers flew across her datapad, recording each decision. They were beginning to cramp, tired after spending the past two hours in the Senator’s private wing as she reviewed their political stances for the next week.

The evening cycle shone dimly through the office’s window, reminding Nura of just how long she had sat there typing. The stack of flimsi and datapads on the Senator’s desk hadn’t gotten any smaller than when they started. She stifled a yawn, hoping that they would give up soon.

“I heard on good authority that the Chancellor was not pleased by our support of the anti-industrialisation bill introduced by Senator Chuchi,” Sion said as he scanned through his own datapad. “Perhaps next session we could go all-out and make that old codger _really_ angry with our votes.”

Senator Revma laughed, a short exhale of breath that signalled her disdain for the Republic’s elected leader. Nura couldn’t help but agree – something about the man made her skin crawl.

“I think that ends our work for the day.” The Senator stood, ready to dismiss them. “I would just like a word with you, Nura, before we leave for the night.”

Nura nodded, staying in her seat as the other two representatives left; Riatt gave her a sympathetic smile on her way out.

“I trust that you have told no one else about your _situation_ ,” the Senator said as door slid shut.

“No, Senator.” Nura laced her fingers together, placing them over her belly. She felt the anxiety in the pit of her stomach grow and spread through her bloodstream.

“Exactly how many people know the truth of your relationship?”

“Just – three,” she stumbled over her words as heat rose in her cheeks. She hadn’t felt this embarrassed since she was cadet in her first year of training. “You, the…father and one of his brothers.”

Senator Revma nodded. “And you trust both of them?”

“With my life!” Hot anger burned through her veins. “Whatever is going on, they wouldn’t do anything that hurt me or the baby!”

The Senator raised a hand, signalling her to calm herself.

“I just had to be certain.” She sighed, a short and exasperated sound that reminded Nura too much of her own mother. “What I found out in the past two weeks is little more than what you originally brought me. But, from what I have been able to ascertain as of yet, is that none of these women went missing until after they had contacted family members, ranking officers, or otherwise made public statements about the parentage of their children.

“I have brought the issue to the Security Council under the guise of helping find Senator Mon Tith’s daughter. No one but the council itself knows about this request due to the nature of those involved and it will be up to them to unravel this mystery. Until then, you must be careful.”

Nura nodded slowly, taking her leave of the office not long after. The Senator’s words rang in her ears – be careful. Had she not been careful before? Would it even be safe to have Fives come back to her apartment?

She shivered at the thought; it would be cruel to both of them. What Nura really wanted, deep in her heart, was to be back on the beach on Atolli Prime with the war far behind them.

Nura knew that she would have to tell Fives everything during his next rotation back. She felt awful having to burden him with the knowledge but knew she could never forgive herself if something happened and he never knew the truth.

The fear stayed with her as she grabbed her things, ready to go home and crawl into her waiting bed. But even safe in her home, the fear lingered well into the night.

*

Fives woke up to the slimy taste of bacta in his mouth, the texture resembling the flavourless “dessert” rations they had once. His head pounded as he opened his eyes; the lights were dim, but they sent shockwaves of pain into his aching skull. He tried to focus his sight, looking for someone to beg for a sip of water from.

A shadow moved at the edge of his blurred vision.

“You know, you’re one lucky son of a Hutt.”

“How long was I out?” Fives attempted to smile in Jesse’s direction, but winced at the stabbing pain in his neck.

Jesse stepped closer, becoming a more defined blob.

“Two days in a bacta tank after that stunt you and Echo pulled – before you ask, he’s fine. No broken bones for either of you, but concussions and light internal damage after taking that blast.”

Fives winced at the memory, patchy at best, though he recalled the scream of the shells overhead. His vision was slowly adjusting, the ward becoming clearer around him. He knew he was back on the _Resolute_ , in a recovery room though he couldn’t tell if the ship was moving or not. If they were returning to Coruscant, he resolved to himself that Nura would never know about this little misadventure.

“The battle?”

“We won after the Dugs pulled out some experimental weapon,” Jesse replied as he pulled a chair beside Fives’ bed and collapsed into it. “But you missed the craziest thing!”

Fives listened in disbelief as Jesse recounted the monster that attacked after the Separatists’ defeat. A huge, scaled creature that was impervious to lightsabres? It sounded far-fetched, though Fives had learned a long time ago to just go with things when Jedi were involved.

“What are they gonna do with the beast?”

Jesse shrugged. “All I know is that we’re delivering it to Coruscant.”

Fives grunted. “Sounds safe.”

*

Nura’s whole body ached. The night was one of tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. Then, slogging her way through her day had only been made worse by having to rewrite massive sections of a new bill.

The baby kicked her ribs through it all. Three more months of this was not looking like the most fun prospect, but she knew it would be worth it in the end.

But the long days in the senate were still taking a toll on her; they had worked well into the evening for a second day in a row. The only consolation for her being the return of the _Resolute_ to Coruscant, delivering some kind of weapon from Malastere. The update had _pinged_ onto her datapad in the early morning, but she had yet to get through to Fives.

Nura pushed down that particular worry as Riatt stopped at her desk, juggling a stack of datapads.

“I have been tasked with replacing you!” Her friend said with a cheeky smile, handing Nura what she realised were work profiles. “Help me pick some worth interviewing?”

Nura laughed and accepted half the pile. There were candidates from all over Atolli Prime, all interested in joining the Senator’s retinue while Nura took her maternity leave. She sighed as she looked over them.

“It seems like it’s still so far away – it barely feels real still.”

“Oh, just wait!” Riatt shook her head, eyes crinkling as she smiled. “You think time is moving slowly until suddenly your baby is twelve years old and doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

“I just can’t wait to sleep,” Nura admitted as she shifted in her chair, discomfort radiating up her back. “A full night’s sleep with no alarm waking me up in the morning or someone kicking me in the diaphram.”

Sion laughed from his desk.

“Don’t act like you’re going on vacation there Nura!” He stood up and started toward the kitchen. “I don’t think I slept for two years after my daughter was born.”

Nura glared at him, but her ire was more in play than anything.

“Anyone looking passable to you?” Riatt asked her, pointedly ignoring their exchange.

Before Nura could respond, the walls shook around them.

She heard glass shatter from the kitchen as the power turned off, leaving them in the darkness with only the faint glow of the emergency lights streaking in from the hallway.

“What is the nine Corellian hells is going on?” Riatt jumped up from her chair and raced to the far window. From where she sat, Nura could see flames and rising smoke in the distance.

“Are we being attacked?” Sion appeared from the kitchen as the building shook again, nearly sending Nura to the floor. “Where’s the Senator?”

“I’m fine!” A voice called from the darkness as a small form inched its way towards them. The Senator was limping, Nura wondered if she had fallen as the building shook, and leaned heavily on a cane that Nura had only seen her use a few times before. “If we are all alright, we need to get moving. I don’t trust that the evacuation alarms have yet to sound.”

Nura nodded in the dark, heaving herself up from her chair to follow the group out of the office and down the corridor. Senator Revma led her delegation through the halls of the Senate as the building continued to rock around them.

They followed other delegations through the building, hurrying as even the emergency lights flickered around them. Somewhere she could hear the sound of the corridor collapsing.

“What in all the oceans of the world is happening out there?” Senator Revma hissed as something screamed outside. “And where are the guards?”

“Senator, wait!” Sion pulled her back just as the ceiling collapsed in front of them, metal screaming in protest and duracrete crashing down to block their way.

“In here!” Sion pulled them into a small meeting room. “Someone, get on their commlink and get the guards here now!”

Riatt helped Nura to sit in one of the chairs, then pressed her comm but was greeted by only static. “It’s not working! Try on yours.”

“ _Kriff_!” Sion rummaged through his pockets. “I must have left mine in the office!”

Nura gulped down air as the inhuman screams from outside grew louder. She looked to the senator, who leaned heavily on her cane as she tried to compose herself. “Sion get to the lower levels and bring the guard here. You’ll go faster if you go alone.”

“But senator – “

“Go!”

*

Not for the first time, Fives cursed Senator’s Revma’s hatred of noise in her office. Nura hadn’t answered her comm and panic was beginning to set in. He ducked out of the supply closet he made his third call in and nodded to Echo in thanks for keeping watch. They had both only just been cleared for duty the hour before and had returned to find to their battalion in chaos.

Their brothers were scrambling in the hallway, getting to their muster points after the call went out about the escaped Zillo beast.

“She didn’t answer.”

“I’m sure she’s been evacuated with the rest of the Senate building,” Echo tried to reassure him. “Keep your focus here and now.”

“You sound like General Kenobi,” Fives joked back weakly. It did nothing to hide his fear of being unable to contact Nura. They rejoined Torrent Company just as Captain Rex hurried them into gunships to hunt the beast.

"You two fall behind!" The Captain took one look at the pair before giving the order, grumbling about them being fresh out of the med bay. Fives took some offense to that, but did as he was told.

He joined Echo in the back of their company, watching the brothers in front of them scramble though they couldn't do anything to help. Fives watched in awe as the beast perched itself on the Senate dome. Their blasters were useless against it, even the Jedi’s lightsabres had no effect on the beast’s scales.

He had almost lost all hope until the gas bombs brought it down, bringing an end to the fight before it could bring more destruction.

The upper levels of the Senate dome had caved in under its feet, destroying the offices within. It took all his resolve to not think about where in that building Nura’s office was.

Just as Captain Rex made the signal for them to board the transports, one of Fox’s men waved him down.

“Sir, General Skywalker has requested your company help with sweeps of the building,” the trooper said with a salute. “A few of the senators who didn’t make it to the underground shelter haven’t checked in yet. The building’s intercom system was knocked out by the beast, so we’ll have to find them on foot.”

“Who are we looking for?”

“Senators Ko-Roth, Binrame, Freedune, and Revma, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up needing to break this chapter into two parts so that it would flow better. I also adjusted the chapter count because let's be real here. I've been continually re-watching Clone Wars and it's pushing me to write more to fill the gap between season one and three where we don't see Fives or Echo at all.
> 
> Thanks for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting!!!!! <3 <3 <3


	12. End (Part 2)

CHAPTER 12 – END PART II

* * *

Fives felt the ground drop out from under him as his brothers swarmed out of their transports, reluctantly called back into duty.

His assessment of the situation brought no comfort to him, though he allowed himself to lapse into the mindset of a soldier; it was easier and more productive than his initial panic.

He tried to collect what information he could.

From where he stood, he could see thick smoke rising up into Coruscant’s artificial atmosphere. Fire crews from the planet’s garrison clustered around the still-burning fires at the building’s highest points as they struggled to contain the blaze. He knew from the report streaming over the comms that Senator Revma was missing, that the three members of her delegation hadn’t been heard from, and the Zillo beast had brought down major portions of the Senate building’s roof where her offices were located, though these were not yet at risk of catching fire.

Commander Fox and the guard were overwhelmed with evacuating the hundreds of politicians from the underground shelters, directing civilian traffic away from the area, as well as dealing with their own casualties from the incident. The 501st would bring much needed relief.

While rescue missions were not at the forefront of their training, they had done their fair share of extractions in active battlefields – this would be nothing more than the easiest of those times. Fives forced himself to focus only the possibility of a positive outcome.

Beside him, Echo motioned for Fives to steady himself as the Captain began barking orders. Fives didn’t know what to do if they were sidelined again, left at the ship to wait out the mission just for some already-healed injuries.

“I need men to sweep the upper levels for survivors,” Captain Rex looked to his assembled men, most already scuffed and tired from the altercation with the Zillo beast. “Any volunteers?”

“We’ll go, sir!” Echo called out. There was little suspicion as to why the two of them would want to experience at least some excitement.

Captain Rex looked the two of them over, as if debating whether or not he would be risking their injury for the second time that week if he let them be apart of the rescue mission. After a long moment, he nodded to them and moved on to pulling more volunteers out of the battle-worn group.

“Make sure your seals are tight, boys!” The Captain ordered as they spread out into the building. “Keep your eyes sharp and your comms on!”

A smoky haze clouded the already darkened hallways, swirling gently in the lights streaming from their helmets. Fives thanked whoever it was that had thought to put air filters into their helmets.

The floor was clear where they entered, though Fives knew the damage would be worse the higher they climbed. Fives motioned for Echo to follow him as he signaled to their squad leader they were breaking off. Other pairs did the same, flooding into the myriad of corridors and stairways that made up the building.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Echo asked as he let Fives take the lead.

“Twenty floors up, eastern side of the building.” Combined with the map provided on his HUD, Nura had told him enough about the Senate building that Fives was certain he could make his way toward her office.

They traced their way through the stairway, smoke growing thicker in the air and damage to the building becoming more apparent as they climbed. A new fear rose in Fives throat that had him stopping in his tracks, trying to comm Nura again.

“Kriff!” He swore as it went unanswered again. “What do you think the chances are of damage from smoke inhalation?”

“For a human?” Echo paused a moment, most likely reading out the air quality stats from his HUD. “We need to move faster.”

*

The ground finally stopped moving under their feet after one last great shake that sent dust falling through the air, coating everything in a white blanket.

“Whatever was happening out there,” Riatt said tentatively. “I think it must be over.”

Nura was not sure. There was still a thick cloud of dust in the air and the smell of smoke had only gotten worse as they waited for any sign of rescue. Her body was tense with fear – both for herself and for her baby. She had only experienced this rising unease once before during the battle of Atolli Prime. The darkness that surrounded them reminded her far too much of the darkness in the mines that still haunted her.

“Do you think Sion got out?” Nura tried to cling to that small hope as she rubbed the spot where the baby was still kicking.

“Of course!” Riatt replied as she moved towards the doorway. More debris had fallen in their way since Sion’s departure, effectively trapping them in the room. Riatt studied the mess in front of her. “No matter how quickly he found help though, I doubt we’ll be leaving anytime soon.”

Nura groaned, feeling hungry and tired and overwhelmed. She looked to the Senator for guidance.

“Do you think it will be much longer, Senator?”

The old woman had taken a seat several chairs down from Nura. Even in the dark, Nura was surprised at just how old Senator Revma looked. She was curled into herself, a small spot of white-cladded person in the darkness. She didn’t respond to the question.

“Senator?” Nura could hear the rising panic in her own voice. “Are you alright?”

“Hmm?” Was the only response Nura heard as she heaved herself up from her chair, concern driving her to the Senator’s side.

Senator Revma looked up at her as if she had only just then realised Nura was talking to her.

“I’m fine, my dear.”

She raised her arm as if to wave off Nura’s attention but winced into herself at the movement. From the dimness of the emergency lights, weakly streaming in from the corridor, Nura could see the dark stain on the Senator’s white _himation_.

“Riatt! I think we have a problem!”

*

Air filter or not, Fives’ lungs screamed at him as he climbed yet another flight of stairs. The passageway was narrow, built solely for emergency evacuations and did not match the opulence of the rest of the building. Echo followed him closely, helping him pry open a door to the main building, which their HUD maps displayed as leading to the warren of offices and meeting rooms that made up that floor of the Senate.

Exhaustion weighed heavily on his shoulders.

Their original planned point of entry onto the office level had been blocked by a caved ceiling, forcing the pair to backtrack down five flights and follow another corridor to a new set of stairs on the opposite side of the building.

There was no sign of civilians, Atollian or otherwise, as Fives careened around another corner. He gave a sparing glance to the various passageways and rooms they passed but focused on his goal of finding Nura and her delegation. Had he been in a better state, Fives would have kicked himself for being so sloppy in clearing the empty rooms.

He pulled ahead of Echo, following the path on his HUD that told him he was getting closer to where he knew Nura would be.

“Fives, this way!”

He skidded to a stop, turning to run to his brother. Echo was holding a civilian by the shoulder, his robes tattered and dirty in the blinding lights of their torches. He must have limped out from one of the hallways that Fives had barely spared a glance. He shook his head, berating himself for not paying enough attention.

The man coughed, a hacking sound that reminded Fives of the falling air quality inside the building.

Fives recognised him as Atollian by his clothing.

“Where is your senator?”

“Meeting room – five levels up,” the man replied breathlessly. “They sent me to get help. The ceiling was collapsing, and I don’t know if they’ll be able to get out by themselves.”

A slow-burning anger started in the pit of Fives’ stomach as he thought of this man abandoning his people so carelessly.

“How many are there? Is anyone injured?”

He tried not to let the intensity of his emotions into his voice but failed. The man flinched.

“No, I don’t know-” He shook his head as if remembering was a struggle. “There are three of them. No injuries, at least I don’t think so. Please, you have to help them!”

Fives took the information in, trying to calm himself but failing.

“You take him back to the main level,” he finally said to Echo. “I’ll find them and comm Captain Rex for back-up.”

“That’s a horrible plan!” Echo replied, but Fives was already moving.

He followed the trail in the debris and dust left by the Atollian man, tracing his way back to where he knew Nura was trapped. His fear grew as he passed collapsed sections of roof and flickering emergency lights. The air quality readings on his HUD continued to drop the higher he climbed into the building.

Fives adjusted his comms as he ran, sending out a beacon to his position for his brothers to follow.

He would find Nura, he resolved to himself. He would find her and her delegation and everything would be fine.

*

“Keep pressure on the wound,” Nura instructed to Riatt as she ripped more makeshift bandages from her robe. The green fabric tore easily, coming away in strips in Nura’s shaking hands. “Try not to jostle her too much.”

Riatt gave a wordless nod, her face pale in the dim light. She had never seen war, Nura knew, and she looked far more scared than Nura had ever seen her before.

“Do you think she’ll live?” Riatt asked after a moment.

Nura considered the Senator’s wound, placing another strip of fabric to her side as she found the words to comfort her friend.

“She should if we do our best.”

Nura tried to be hopeful but it rang false even to herself. The wound on the Senator’s side was deep, probably caused when the ceiling collapsed. She tried not to think of what would have happened if it had been her.

Time dragged by; each minute that passed was an eternity. The dust and smoke in the air had grown thicker, swirling around them in the dim emergency lights. Nura knew it would only be a matter of time before they truly started feeling the effects of smoke inhalation. Her lungs already felt tight and sore, like she had just run up a flight of stairs.

But Riatt was doing worse. Her eyes were rimmed with red and her breathing had become shallower as she strained to press the bandages into the Senator’s side. Whether it was the stress of the situation or the worsening air quality, Nura didn’t know.

“I can’t-”

Riatt’s face was pale as Nura took over on the Senator, falling once again into the role of a soldier that had been engrained in her since childhood.

“It’s alright, just focus on breathing.”

“Do you think anyone’s coming?” Riatt’s voice was shaking at she sat back, collapsing into the ground.

“Sion is going to send the guard for us, remember?” Nura tried her best to sound confident. “They’re going to rescue us, and we’ll be back on the Senate floor by next week, okay? I need you to focus on that, tell me what we still have to do for next week.”

“The rebuttal-” Riatt blinked hard, voice cracking. “The rebuttal against the proposed amendments to the constitution. And I have to coordinate with Organa’s people for our coalition.”

Nura nodded, but the smoke cloyed at her throat and eyes, threatening to send tears streaming down her face. She tried to ignore her own discomfort, focused on the task at hand. The Senator was breathing hoarsely, eyes open but not following their conversation.

“Tell me more, what’s the Senator’s schedule like?”

“She has a lunch meeting mid-week with Senator Mon Tith – the Security Council is trying to locate his daughter-”

Something crashed in the hallway, cutting off her thought and causing both women to look to the blocked doorway.

“Riatt?”

“I heard it too,” she replied as she crawled into a standing position. Nura watched helplessly as Riatt tried to push through the debris blocking their way out. “In here! Please, we’re trapped!”

The moment stretched on for an eternity, Nura’s hope dimishing with each extended second. Perhaps they had only heard the further collapse of the building and a rescue wasn’t coming after all.

Nura focused on keeping the pressure to Senator Revma’s wound even, forcing back a choking sob until she heard the distinct sound of boots thudding down the hallway.

Riatt cried out as the sound drew closer and Nura could hear a clone speaking through a helmet comm.

“I’ve located a senator and delegation, sending coordinates now. Requesting immediate medical assistance.” The trooper paused, then said to Riatt: “Step back, ma’am.”

*

The debris blocking the doorway was nothing a little leverage couldn’t fix. Fives grunted in relief as the main obstacle, a piece of metal roofing structure, shifted out of the way. It wasn’t a big opening, but enough for him to fit through.

The woman who had called out to him sobbed in relief as he entered, lighting up the small room with his helmet torches. The air was dusty and hazy, but what drew his attention was the woman kneeling beside another prone person.

“Fives!” The look of relief on Nura’s tired and dirty face would stay with him for the rest of his life, calling him back to their first days together fighting for her home planet. But the soldier in him pushed those thoughts down.

“What’s the situation?” He grabbed for the emergency medpack on his hip. He recognised Senator Revma in the harsh lights of his helmet, paler than he remembered and barely lucid as Nura pressed a wad of makeshift bandages to her side.

“Deep cut from when the ceiling collapsed; I don’t think there’s anything in the wound but she’s still bleeding badly.”

He pulled out the bacta patch from his kit.

“This should help until Kix gets here with the medevac.”

They moved in silent tandem, dressing the Senator’s wound as easily as they might have washed dishes together. The other woman, Riatt his mind supplied, watched in stunned silence as they worked together.

“You know each other?” She finally asked when they were finished.

Nura met her colleague’s gaze easily.

“Riatt, meet Fives of the 501st – he’s part of the battalion that aided in the liberation of the mines.”

He nodded, taking her lead.

“I had hoped we would see each other again under…better circumstances.” He looked again over both of them, forcing himself not to focus all of his attention on the streaks of blood and dirt on Nura’s face. “You two are alright?”

Riatt coughed but nodded as Nura answered.

“We’re a little worse for wear but I think we’ll survive.”

Over the comms, Fives heard Kix delivering orders to the medevac squad as they drew closer to his location. Fives related an update on the Senator’s condition, urging his brothers to move faster for her sake.

His hope for a quick and clean end to the situation was diminished by the alarms in his HUD, warning of a dangerous drop in air quality and the rising temperature in the rooms above them. Nura was already breathing heavily, eyes red from the smoke that continued to thicken in the room.

“Good, because we need to move.”

Wrangling civilians had never been his strong suit, but Fives knew they could not stay where they were if they wanted to survive the night. Senator Revma appeared stable enough to move.

He picked the old woman up gingerly, trying not to hurt her further as he instructed the other women to crawl through the path he had created in the debris.

“Stay low and move slowly,” he instructed. Fives knew Nura could stay calm in a situation like this, but her colleague was already showing signs of distress. “We’ll be out of here soon; we just need to keep moving.”

He led them through the corridors at low crouch, following the same path he had taken to find them though the smoke was now truly clouding the air. Fives adjusted his grip on the Senator as her breathing turned slower and shallower.

Over the comms, Captain Rex gave an update on the spreading fire.

“We need you to get to ground level as soon as possible,” he said to Fives directly. The Captain’s voice grew more intense as alarms in his HUD continued to flash red. “The fire has shifted to your direction; the main western staircase is already on fire. Medevac crew is coming to meet you from the east, but you need to move quickly.”

“Trying my best, sir.” Fives replied as he led the group forward. His legs protested the continued strain as he moved slowly and deliberately through the hallways, drawing closer to their exit. “Do we have any alternate exit strategies yet?”

“General Skywalker is working on it.”

“Am I going to like this plan?” Fives tried to sound casual, well aware of how the General’s plans usually turned out.

There was a distinct crackling overhead, drowning out the Captain’s reply as Fives shouted for his group to stop and step back. One hand still holding the Senator, he turned, trying to shield Nura and Riatt as best he could as the ceiling in front of them fell, burning debris blocking their only way out. Nura held his arm tightly as her friend sobbed.

“We’re okay,” Nura said, but her face betrayed otherwise. “But we need to move.”

Fives nodded, trying his comm.

“Uh, sir?” The burning debris had lit what was left of the hallway décor on fire, turning the once opulent space into a building wall of fire. “We’re going to need that exit strategy sooner rather than later.”

There was no response but static for a too-long moment. Then, a distinctly confident voice crackled through his helmet.

“Way ahead of you, Fives. Just stay exactly where you are.”

Relief washed over him at the General’s voice, confidant as ever even in rising danger.

A moment passed and then another before anything happened. Fives held his breath as they waited, nearly crying out in relief as the blue tip of a lightsabre pierced through the floor four feet in front of them, dropping a circular section to the level below them with a thud. A figure jumped through the hole, graceful and unaffected by the fire building around them.

“I heard you needed a rescue.”

*

The Grand Republic Medical Facility was in disarray as troopers rushed them in, sending doctors and med-droids into a new flurry of activity. Somewhere between being pulled from the building by General Skywalker’s team and being brought into the clean air of Coruscant’s surface, Fives had been pulled away from Nura’s side by medics. She could only watch helplessly as he was sat down by a medic and she was guided to a stretcher, then loaded onto a transport with other wounded politicians.

At some point during the short ride, a med droid pressed an oxygen mask to her face and she gulped in the pure air greedily, lungs straining to breathe after so long in the smoke. For all the initial excitement, though, she was relatively unhurt and said exactly that to the tired doctor that instructed the troopers to bring her to an exam room right away, despite the others around her nursing burns and broken limbs.

The doctor shook his head, giving her a sympathetic look as the troopers moved her away from the triage area.

“Apologies Representative Thalassa, but your condition means you get to go to the front of the line.”

Her medical exam was only that in the barest of sense. The hospital was not prepared for so many demanding patients and the doctor who met her in the exam room seemed more concerned with the raised voices in the hallways than with her patient. She passed a scanner over Nura quickly, reading the results quickly to an awaiting med droid as she worked.

“Minor smoke inhalation, lowered oxygen saturation and slight dehydration. No fetal harm detected but put her in overnight recovery for observation.”

The med-droid accepted the doctor’s instructions, barely acknowledging Nura as she was once again carted to another room. The recovery ward was dimly lit, filled to the brim with victims of the Senate fire like her who were in for minor observation.

Nura tried to lay quietly in her bed, but the racing thoughts about what could have happened, her worry about Fives and if he would know she was alright, proved far too distracting for her to sleep. She took a deep breath, trying to recite her schedule for next week in her mind as to calm herself. She remembered telling Riatt to do the same thing only hours before, calming herself through repetition of their mundane tasks.

But that whole schedule would likely need to change given the current state of the Senate building and she tried to construct in her mind what those changes would look like. The constitutional debate could be done remotely, but the Senator’s meetings would need to change times and locations based on her recovery.

And what about the Security Council? Senator Mon Tith’s daughter was still missing despite the state of the Senate, and surely that meeting would have given Nura much more information about whether she was at risk.

A realisation stopped her thoughts, turning her blood cold.

How had Riatt known about that meeting?

The Senator told her that no one else knew about it, Nura was certain. And Sion wasn’t the kind of person to idly gossip about anything, let alone something the Senator had clearly labeled as need-to-know.

Without thinking, Nura swung her legs around and stood from the bed. She shoved her feet into a pair of slippers that a droid had given her when she changed into a hospital gown, resolving to herself that seeing the Senator was her only option at that moment.

The doctor watching over the recovery ward had other ideas and glared at Nura over her datapad at the request to visit a member someone in the middle of the night.

“Senator Revma has only just been brought out of surgery and requires rest – as do you, I might add.”

Nura sighed, trying to think quickly to convince the Twi’lek woman in front of her as to why she needed to see the Senator.

“Please, I just need to see her. She’s the only family I have on this planet.” Nura tried to play up sympathy for herself, pretending to blink back tears as she folded her hands on her belly. “I’ll be quick, I just need her to know we’re both okay.”

The doctor’s face softened for a moment before she called out to a passing med droid, instructing it to take Nura to the Senator’s room for a short and brief visit. Nura thanked her profusely as the droid led her through the hospital.

The corridors were as busy as they had been upon Nura’s arrival and she had to dodge rushing doctors and passing stretchers and orderly droids as they moved through the building. The droid led her into a less busy hall and into one of the private rooms.

“Doctor Amar has instructed me that your visit should be no longer than five standard minutes. I will begin counting now.”

Nura thanked the droid, entering the room as quiet as she could.

Senator Revma was laid out on the hospital bed, machines beeping and humming steadily around her. She looked much better than she had in Fives’ arms, but was still far worse than Nura had ever seen her.

“Senator?” Nura whispered tentatively.

The frail woman on the bed opened her eyes slowly, returning bit by bit to the woman of durasteel Nura had known her as.

“Your young man is quite gallant,” she said as she recognised her visitor. “I can see why you chose him.”

Nura flushed, unsure of how to respond. There were a hundred things she knew she should say, but she could see the med droid still hovering just outside the door, reminding her of their time limit.

“I’m glad you’re alright, Senator.”

Senator Revma grunted in response. “But that’s not why you came here in the middle of the night, is it?”

Nura felt a flush of shame at where her thoughts had led her.

“I just had one question, about Riatt.” She took a breath, centering her resolve. “When we were waiting to be rescued she said… well she knew about the Security Council, but I thought you had said no one knew but the council itself?”

Senator Revma moved slowly, pushing herself into a sitting position as she motioned for Nura to bring her a glass of water from the pitcher beside her bed.

“Riatt is a good person, someone who strives to always do right,” the Senator said as she accepted the glass. She took a slow sip then spoke quietly, as if concerned someone might overhear. “But she is also under the Chancellor’s thumb, delivering him information whenever he asks. I don’t blame her, but you must be careful around her.”

* * *

_Elsewhere in the galaxy…_

The ocean waves beat hard against the walls of Tipoca City. Nala Se studied the holoprojections before her, descriptions of her most recent failures flowing out as she waited her scheduled holocall. Lord Tyrannus would not be pleased at her continued lack of success.

Nonetheless, she answered the call without fanfare at exactly 22:00 standard time. The proud figure, a miniature in blue that even the wisest of the Kaminoans had come to respect, regarded her in thinly veiled contempt.

“It is a great disappointment that our project has failed so easily.”

“The inability to secure any viable tissue samples has greatly hampered our efforts into stabilising the cloning process, it is true.” Nala Se nodded, a slight incline of her head to indicate her own disappointment. “It is an unfortunate truth that none of our prospective samples were able to provide any serviceable data following the termination process.”

“What of the clones themselves?” Lord Tyrannus crossed his arms, impatience edging into his voice. “Would they not provide ample information, given that they fathered these offspring?”

“Unfortunately, none of these clones are in any way remarkable. It is only through statistical probability that they succeeded in procreation.”

“That is not an acceptable answer for my master.” Lord Tyrannus’ face darkened. “We have identified another prospective sample, but it would be politically unwise for action to be taken at this time. Would it be more effective for our purposes to allow the samples to reach an older stage of development?”

The rain fell harder outside, causing the projection to waver. Nala took that moment to collect her thoughts, to find reason with this most unreasonable client.

“Perhaps, but that would violate our agreement with the Republic. The cloned DNA remains the sole property of Kamino – these offspring are both a liability and a violation of our exclusive rights to Jango Fett’s genome.”

Lord Tyrannus softened his gaze, changing his features to align with a human expression of sympathy. Nala did not understand how such changes in facial alignment were meant to persuade her one way or another.

“I think, perhaps, it would be within Kamino’s – and my own, interests that what is happening here remain strictly confidential. It would not do either of our parties well should the bleeding hearts of the Republic learn of our strict upkeeping of your contract’s terms.”

A threat behind a kind face, Nala surmised. Could she risk her people’s most lucrative contract in centuries for one genome violation? The prime minister would never forgive her, nor would anyone else.

“As long as the sample is returned to Kamino within an adequate range of time so as not to allow further degradation of the genome – this plan is acceptable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update!
> 
> Despite a fairly detailed outline - this chapter fought tooth and nail against me. This is definitely the chapter where I wished that I could just plonk ideas from my head onto paper because nothing really turned out the way I wanted it to. 
> 
> Thank you to all of my readers, kudos-givers, and the people who have left comments! <3


	13. New Horizons

CHAPTER 13 – NEW HORIZONS

“Do you think he’ll be here in time?”

Nura gritted her teeth and pretended not to hear the question whispered to Riatt, who had spent the prior three hours moving between sympathy and disappointment. The midwife waited for an answer as she ground herbs together, the sound sending a wave of nausea over Nura as pain continued to twist in her gut.

“I’ve never even met him,” Riatt whispered back. “For her sake, I hope so. She doesn’t deserve to go through this alone. But the Separatists have been blockading the route from Atolli Prime for weeks – her own parents couldn’t get off the planet!”

“Poor thing,” the midwife surmised. “This war has done more to tear apart families than Corellian whiskey.”

Nura tried to focus on the other women’s hushed conversations to distract herself from the agony going on in her body, but the pain sent her doubling over. She held onto the back of her couch for support, breathing through clenched teeth.

“I’ve got her,” she heard Riatt say to the midwife as she crossed the floor from Nura’s kitchen. The small apartment had been co-opted by birth preparations, blankets and towels, and medical equipment strategically placed and ready. Nura scrunched her eyes closed and willed the pain to go away.

When she finally opened them again, Riatt was there with a reassuring smile. She pressed a cool cloth to Nura’s sweaty neck and urged her to start walking again.

It was an act of sincerity that made Nura hate even more the truth of Riatt’s betrayal of their delegation. Nura’s final three months of work had been clouded by the need to monitor whatever information Riatt got her hands on, how much she was telling the Chancellor of their non-support of his regime. Riatt had a sincerity in that deception as well.

That was what made this even harder – because, for all the subterfuge, there were bags of baby clothes and old toys and little holobooks Riatt’s children had long outgrown. For every betrayal of their delegation there was advice and sympathy and friendship.

“I can keep walking,” Nura finally said as she gritted her teeth to the pain. Her hatred of this political game was a powerful distraction; it extended far beyond this conflict to the person missing in this scene.

Fives was halfway across the galaxy by Nura’s estimate. The 501st was not due to rotate back to Coruscant for days yet, destroying another experience they should be sharing together. The reports of the victory on Geonosis had only come in the morning before and her own messages to Fives had gone unanswered.

She may have been in a room full of people, but Nura had never felt more alone than she did at the thought of having her baby without Fives.

*

Fives ignored the flashing light on his HUD, focusing on the Commander’s recounting of her adventure with Geonosian brain worms instead of the incoming message. He had yet to have any time to breathe, let alone the space from his brothers to answer Nura’s call.

“They crawled into their noses?” Hardcase held a hand to his face as if to thwart off oncoming worms as Jesse laughed.

Commander Tano nodded emphatically. “It’s the easiest route to the brain – once they were in, they had complete control!”

The thought sent a shudder up Fives’ spine as Hardcase reacted with an exaggerated retch that triggered laughter from Commander Tano and the assembled _vode_. But before she could finish her story, their group was interrupted by the arrival of Captain Rex into the hanger.

“Sorry kid,” he said without a hint of apology in his voice as he sent troopers back to their assigned duties. “You can give the boys nightmares some other time.”

Fives leapt up from the crate he and Echo were sitting on, unwilling to argue with the Captain over patrol duty as they hurried their way back into the bowls of the _Resolute_.

“Do you mind if I-?” Fives pointed to his comms once they were in a deserted hallway on the lowest levels of the ship.

Echo sighed before motioning him to an empty supply closet.

“Thanks, _vod_!”

Once out of sight of the security holos and any potential prying eyes, Fives clipped his helmet to his belt and looked to his wrist comm. The closer they traveled to Coruscant was when he would start to receive Nura’s messages. The last one he had received was days before Geonosis as they resupplied in the mid-rim; it was a holo of their baby-to-be that he had pulled Echo in to see. His _vod_ , however, had been more concerned about getting back to their patrol than the blurry little figure in the holo.

Fives clicked the message.

Nura stood before him in miniature, a figure in the blue shades of the staticky holoprojector. Her face was tired even in the uneven light, eyes drawn down in concentration. He didn’t have to hear a word to know what she was about to say.

“My contractions started this morning,” her hands were folded over the belly he had kissed goodbye over four weeks before. “I know you wanted to be here when the baby came.”

She breathed heavily for a moment, pain taking over her features before she continued.

“We’ll be here when you come home. I love you.”

The transmission ended, leaving him once in darkness in a tiny room on a starship in the middle of a very lonely galaxy. Fives wiped the tears from his eyes, put his helmet back on, and left to meet his brother.

*

Pain twisted in Nura’s insides like a skiff caught in a hurricane; it sent her bracing herself against the couch yet again, holding herself steady until it subsided once again.

“I can’t do it,” she heard herself say.

Riatt was with her in an instant, rubbing her back once again while the midwife passed a med scanner over her.

“We’re in the homestretch now,” the midwife said to her. “It’s almost over.”

But even the promise of how this would end wasn’t enough to calm Nura’s fear. She tried to push their hands away from her aching body. Sweat poured down her face.

“I can’t – I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.” Riatt affirmed as Nura tensed again. “You can do it because you’ve done more than a woman twice your age. You’ve fought for our homeworld, you’ve pulled yourself out of a burning building, and you’ve survived Senator Revma for years. This is just another thing to conquer.”

Nura choked back a sob as she concentrated on anything but the pain in her body.

“What was your schedule last week?” Riatt tried a different distraction.

“What?” Nura could barely string a thought together.

“What was the first thing you did?” Riatt encouraged as she rubbed Nura’s back.

“I made tea,” Nura said through gritted teeth. “Then I – then I helped you draft that water conservancy bill. We made preparations for the debate next week.”

Had Riatt been truly worthy of her trust, she would have also told her about the lunch meeting she took in Senator Revma’s office where the old woman had pledged her continued protection to Nura.

The Security Council had effectively shut down what little investigation Nura had started, citing a lack of resources given the rising tides of the war. A few women lost in the fray of a galaxy torn apart were a drop in the bucket compared to those dying by the thousands in battle. And the clones sent to reconditioning without reason were simply being spared the indecency of having a fraternization charges splashed across their records.

It reeked of a cover-up, Nura knew, most likely to protect the image of the clone army as the stalwart protectors of the Republic rather than as an army of young men unleashed on the galaxy.

The anger sustained Nura through another contraction.

What neither her, nor Sion, nor even the Senator herself could figure out was _why_ the woman had yet to resurface anywhere.

The thought was cut off by the midwife guiding her down to the floor.

“This is where the fun begins, my dear.”

*

Fives left the supply closet in a stupor, unsure of how to meet his brother’s gaze or last another day on the ship.

Echo nudged him gently as they walked.

“Something wrong, _vod_?”

The Senate fire was still fresh in both their minds, a bleak reminder of the danger faced by everyone in this uncertain war. His brother’s voice was tinged in fear of another episode like that.

Fives felt the seconds pass by as he gathered the courage to speak.

“Nura’s having the baby.”

He tried to walk on, to leave the words behind him, but Echo grabbed his arm and forced him to stop.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Fives could picture Echo’s face behind his bucket, misunderstanding colouring his voice. “We’re only a day out from Coruscant, can’t she wait until then?”

Fives laughed, the feeling pulling him away from his sadness. He shook his head as he spoke.

“No, that’s…that’s not how it works. The baby will have been born by the time I get there. It’s not like they’re taking it out of a vat – it happens pretty quickly.”

“Oh.” Echo dropped his arm and the two of them stood silently for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Fives led them on through the empty hallways, each step feeling like a kick to the heart.

“What’s it like?” Echo’s voice cut through the silence of their patrol.

“What?”

His _vod_ paused for a moment as if to clarify what exactly he was thinking to himself before he asked Fives.

“Knowing there’s another person in the universe because of you?”

Fives couldn’t help the smile that he felt stretch across his face.

“It’s…terrifying. But also, awesome. I just want to be there for her, for them.”

Echo nodded, as if he was trying to understand what it might be like to have something outside of the war, something bigger than just brotherhood.

“It’ll all work out in the end, _vod_. One day you’ll be kicked back on some beach and never think about the war.”

Fives couldn’t wait for that day.

*

The _Resolute_ docked in Coruscant in record time. Fives felt like he could do the work of ten troopers if it meant that he got to see Nura one moment sooner.

“You’re earning your keep.” Captain Rex observed as Fives cleared another hanger of empty crates. “Eager for shore leave?”

Fives didn’t know what to reply. He decided for carefree ease, the same lightheartedness that had carried him through much of the war even as his brothers fell around him.

“As eager as anyone else leaving that dust-ball of a planet behind.”

The Captain looked as if he had more to say but thought better of it. He turned and left, leaving Fives more confused than ever. The feeling lasted only as long as it took him to finish his duties for the day, eager to leave the base in his wake.

He signalled his dis departure to Echo and gave Jesse and Hardcase the slip the moment they entered the entertainment district. Once separated, he waded through the shadows of Coruscant to where he could stash his gear and replace the conspicuous armour for his Atollian clothes. Nura’s worry over some rumour he had told her meant that he took a few extra steps in hiding his identity, securing his armour away in a grimy locker instead of her speeder.

Excitement firing him, Fives nearly ran to Nura’s apartment, dodging traffic and pedestrians as he went. Midnight hours meant little to the citizens of the planet. He could feel the smile growing on his face the closer he came to seeing Nura.

But when he got to the apartment, Fives couldn’t bring himself to open the door. In that moment, nothing had changed yet for him. Once he crossed the threshold, his life would be irrevocably different. In that moment, he realised how unprepared he was.

He took a deep breath and punched in the code.

“Nura?” He called into the darkened apartment. It was as neat as it had been the last time he left, though a little white crib was set up beside the couch.

“Over here,” Nura whispered from the couch. She turned in the darkness, face lighting up at the sight of him though she was tired. She motioned for him to move quietly.

“Were you alone this whole time?” He whispered back, looking around the apartment as he joined her.

“No,” she shook her head. “Riatt was here until I sent her home. The midwife is coming back tomorrow.”

“I don’t like that you had that traitor with you.” His voice raised the smallest bit as he spoke, but she glared him down a notch.

“It’s…more complicated than that.”

A sound pierced the quiet Nura had tried hard to keep. She moved quietly to the crib, cooing as she picked up a little white bundle.

“Forget all of that,” she said as she settled in beside him. “There’s someone here to meet you.”

The bundle had a little face, little hands, and was making unhappy sounds as Nura bounced and rocked it. Nura’s eyes sparkled in the dim lights shining in from the window, revealing to him the most important thing he’d ever laid his eyes on.

“She is seven standard pounds, she has dark eyes and black hair,” Nura looked at the chrono on her wall. “She’s about 24 hours old and she has no name.”

 _She_ , Fives realised. He had a daughter. He had a daughter and she was right there in front of him.

“Can I…can I hold her?”

Nura laughed, then showed him how to hold his arms just _so_ , how to cradle her neck and support her head. He felt as if the future of the galaxy had just been thrown into his incapable hands.

“ _Kriff_ ,” he said as he looked down at the tiny thing. “My blaster weighs more than her.”

“She needs a name.” Nura said after a moment. “Don’t clones name each other?”

The baby was looking wide-eyed at him now, as if she was also expecting something great from him.

“I’m not sure she’d be a great Wrench or Gunner…”

Nura traced a finger over the baby’s tiny face, humming lightly. “No, I don’t think she’d suit those names.”

The melody reminded Fives of the night that seemed so long ago, when he had first dared to kiss a member of the Senate. Music had filled the air and Nura had worn a crown of flowers. Those little yellow flowers had smelled so pretty, had made Nura’s eyes shine like they were shining now. Somewhere in the apartment, he knew she had pressed and dried one of those little buds. Small and delicate, just like the baby in his arms.

“What about…Saffra?”

Nura considered it for a moment, weighing the name against their daughter.

“Very traditional,” she finally replied. “I like it.”

Fives kissed her, then kissed his new daughter and took in her baby smell.

“Welcome to the world, little Saffra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos!
> 
> I'm going to be taking a week-long break from posting to re-orient what I have written so far with how the story is going. If there's anything you want to see, let me know in the comments!

**Author's Note:**

> This is written based off of an idea I had years ago while watching Rebels. It's been changed to fit canon but you can most likely see some connections to a fic I wrote for Rebels many eons ago. Updates will be once a week (?) and don't worry, this time I actually already wrote the ending so I will be obligated to finish uploading :)


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